Given how much of our time is spent watching television these days, and how many of said shows are old shows making a retooled rebooted return, we should celebrate the those shows that deserve applause for knowing when to bow out gracefully.
After all, there are plenty of series’ which outstayed their welcome because viewer popularity lasted beyond their premise – hi there, US version of The Office! – so it’s always refreshing when a show goes “nah, we’re good”.
Such as these three current (ish) shows:
Fleabag
With a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and having inspired an entire generation to get horny about priests, Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ magnificently bleak comedy has followed the classic British sitcom model that ensured that people didn’t get tired of shows like The Office, The Young Ones and Fawlty Towers: two short series and out.
What the other shows didn’t have was a final scene which actually reduced grown men (me) to tears, to be fair.
Goddamn, has an audience ever been dumped so lovingly? How are we meant to cope with that?
Santa Clarita Diet
This Netflix series was a surprise sleeper which proved a less-than-promising concept (suburban mum becomes undead cannibal) could work with a great cast and pithy writing.
And sure, it ended on a note which suggested a whole new direction for season four – but maybe it’s for the best that the show was axed (so, admittedly, it didn’t bow out gracefully so much as be elegantly pushed out the window) before we grew tired of the endlessly delightful sight of Drew Barrymore gleefully devouring human flesh.
May we all adapt so well to the changes which life brings us.
The Good Place
The announcement that the upcoming fourth series of the endlessly quotable afterlife comedy would be the show’s last was obviously disappointing in the sense that The Good Place is the best thing on television (FACT) but also kind of a relief. If any of these shows deserve applause for wrapping up on top, it’s this one.
That’s partially because of the premise, but also because each season has contained at least one massive twist and the longer it goes one the harder that becomes to do without people expecting it.
Even so… god, it’s going to be missed.