As Peaky Blinders and Killing Eve begin their final runs this week, Andrew Male picks his most satisfying television conclusions of all time — but what are yours?
The Sopranos (1999-2007)
Divisive at the time, but 15 years on the suspenseful four-minute dinner with the Soprano family, that ends with a cut to black remains an utterly inspired way to end the series. Watched in the context of the rest of the episode, as we come to terms with the destruction Tony and his family have wrought, that black screen can be read as either Tony’s murder or simply creator David Chase refusing to give him a proper, honourable farewell.
The Office (2001-03)
Given how downbeat the end of series two had been, no one expected Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s office comedy mockumentary to return with a Christmas special so unashamedly sentimental and satisfying. Yes, Dawn and Tim finally kissed, but David Brent was also allowed a certain redemption, by meeting someone who laughed at his jokes and getting to tell the loathsome Finchy to f-off.
Blackadder (1983-89)
What we remember is that slow-motion image of Captain Edmund Blackadder leading his men over the top of a First World War trench towards certain death, a shot that slowly dissolves into a modern-day image of a poppy field. Poignant, moving. But what’s remarkable is how cutting, brutal and angry the humour is up until that point and how that only serves to compound the sadness when it arrives.
Cheers (1982-93)
A sitcom about dreamers and losers hanging round a Boston bar, but also a comedy about friendship, inertia and escape. The series ended perfectly with each of the show’s beloved characters moving on to new chapters in their life, but also came with the perfect visual sign-off as Sam, the barman (Ted Danson) closes up for the night and switches out all the lights.
Fleabag (2016-19)
If you thought the central relationship in series two of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedy drama was between her eponymous narrator and Andrew Scott’s sexy priest, you’d be wrong. Her strongest bond is with us, the viewer, established in those wry looks to camera. So when the priest chooses God over Fleabag, and she also chooses to be alone, her most powerful decision is to walk away from the camera and from us.
The Americans (2013-18)
This morally complex Cold War thriller about KGB spies masquerading as an American family was never going to provide a standard happy ending. This series six finale elegantly rejected standard resolution, allowing our sociopathic spies Philip and Elizabeth (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) to escape justice while the series’ notional hero, Noah Emmerich’s FBI agent Stan Beeman, was left an emotionally hollowed-out shell.
Dad’s Army (1968-77)
Seventies comedies never demanded resolution but Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s much-loved Home Guard sitcom was too expertly crafted to resist one. Transmitted on Remembrance Sunday, 1977, this poignant final episode is centred on Corporal Jones’s wedding to Mrs Fox, but is ultimately an episode about camaraderie. Long before Fleabag, it ends with the entire cast breaking the fourth wall and raising a glass to Britain’s Home Guard.
Mad Men (2007-15)
Matthew Weiner’s drama about 1960s New York advertising executive Don Draper constantly played with notions of truth and sincerity. So what better way to end than cutting from Don’s moment of enlightenment at a California retreat to the 1971 Coca-Cola advert “I’d like to teach the world to sing”? Had Don’s self-awareness been commodified as a Coke jingle, or was his moment of insight merely the idea for a new ad? We’ll never know.
The Shield (2002-08)
Throughout all seven series of Shawn Ryan’s corrupt police drama you were just praying that Michael Chiklis’s brutal LAPD cop, Vic Mackey, would get his comeuppance. The final episode did not disappoint. But rather than having the macho Mackey go down in a hail of bullets or end up behind bars, the show punished him in a far crueller manner, handing him a lowly desk job and a deep sense of inferiority.
Hill Street Blues (1981-87)
After 26 Emmys but falling ratings, Steven Bochco’s delightfully idiosyncratic police procedural, a show that humanised the lives of regular drudge cops, ended in fittingly spectacular and unspectacular fashion. A fire sweeps through the police department, a disgraced cop walks out on his comrades, but, in the end, the scorched Hill Street precinct remains open and operating. There’s a metaphor for you.