Speed of download depends on the speed of your connection and those in the swarm and the number of peers and seeders. I can download a 30 minute video in less time than it would take to watch it if it's a popular torrent. My suggestion would be, if you haven't already, remove any caps on your download and upload speeds and number of peers and seeds that you can be connected to. Also if you are downloading via a torrent that contains a number of files like a whole season's worth of a show, just select for download the ones that you want to see first. You can do that by right clicking the torrent in the downloading list, click show details in context menu, go to the files tab and select the files that you don't want to download, right click, set priority to Do Not Download. Now all your bits are committed to just the files that you want.
Over this 5 Mb DSL line, I have had speeds up to 500 Kb/sec. I wouldn't consider that slow.
So for instance, I just plopped in a torrent for S02E01, size 350.85 MB. There are 358 seeds and 456 peers. I am currently only connected to 38 seeds and 4 peers, yet my download speed is in the high 200s to 300 Kb/sec. Estimated time remaining: 20 minutes and that's only after a few minutes of it spinning up. I would not call that slow. Now those speeds can vary and do vary over your download time.
Just in the time it took to add this edit, I hit over 400 kb/sec and am now connected to 75 seeds and 14 peers. That ain't slow to me.