It’s sad but true – all good things must eventually come to an end. After spending hours upon hours devoted to a particular show and drinking up every last frame of the action, it can be painful prising your fingers from the remote control for a final time and waving a sorrowful goodbye to the fictional characters that have become an intergral part of your life. But as the age-old idiom puts it, if you love someone, let them go.
Five years after Nessa got down on one knee to ask Smithy for his hand in marriage, the show is coming to an end with a special, feature-length episode on Christmas day.
In honour of one of Britain’s best-loved sitcoms reaching its epic finale, our writers pick television’s greatest send-offs – from the long-running favourites that wrapped up every loose thread, to the shorter shows that called it a day at just the right moment and secured their legacy forever.
Six Feet Under
In terms of finales there’s just no coming back from, Six Feet Under is right up there. The last season of the show set in a funeral home was particularly poignant with the death of one of the principal characters, but it all goes into overdrive for the final episode, Everyone’s Waiting. And this one, unlike all the other episodes, starts not with a death but with a birth. It ends with Claire, the youngest member of the Fischer family, driving off to start a new life, intercut with a montage, flashing forward to each of the main characters’ deaths. Set to Sia’s Breathe Me, it was the perfect way to end. A box of tissues very much needed for this one. Nick Clark
Derry Girls
How do you even begin to say goodbye to the beautiful madness that was Channel 4’s Derry Girls? Turns out, the best way was by breaking viewers’ hearts and then mending them again with laughter. The penultimate episode featured possibly the saddest episode of the show ever, with Clare (Nicola Coughlan)’s father dying suddenly. Cue tissues galore. The finale itself picked up the action a year later, letting us absorb the new facets of the girls’ lives as they got ready to fly the nest for university. It’s classic Derry Girls: Sister Michael (Siobhán McSweeney) pops up to deliver some trademark acidic zingers, Erin and Michelle (Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) fight and then make up, and that wee English fella (Dylan Llewellyn) professes his undying love. It’s a perfect way to round off this coming-of-age tale.Vicky Jessop
The Wire
Endings are hard. Mostly, TV shows screw them up. The Wire was so sprawling (five seasons covering the gamut of Baltimore life) how on earth would writers Ed Burns and David Simon do it? With aplomb, was the answer. They didn’t just tie up that season’s story lines, they touched on practically every major theme of the entire show. The whole of the Wire seemed to fall into place, as if you were seeing it isometrically: they had been telling you a great, deep parable about human nature and in those final ninety minutes it all joined up. It was that good. Robbie Smith
Blackadder Goes Forth
Comedy is tragedy plus time, runs the old cliché. But Blackadder Goes Forth managed to create comedy and tragedy in equal measure for its finale. After three series of silliness and knob gags set in different historical periods from the end of the Middle Ages to the Regency, the final one took us to the trenches in the First World War. The gang was all there – from Rowan Atkinson’s Captain Blackadder to Tony Robinson’s Baldrick – and it was the funniest series of the lot, but finished on a heartbreaking note (and apt given the setting) with all the characters going over the top into the enemy guns and certain death. The final scene then faded from the charging soldiers into a quiet field of poppies. No better way to end. Nick Clark
The Good Place
After four brilliantly-scripted seasons (with some episodes about as straightforward as the Jeremy Bearimy timeline), life-after-death show The Good Place wraps with lead Eleanor Shellstrop calmly calling time on her existence in the universe. But crucially, only after seeing and doing everything she ever wanted to do.
The theory is that it’s mortality that gives meaning to life - and the afterlife too, it turns out. It’s sweeter because it’s limited; eternity is a bit of a bummer if you’re there forever. Eleanor walks through the final door, and finds peace. It’s a strangely comforting brain-tickler. Abha Shah
Peaky Blinders
A slick interwar opera that follows a Brummie gang jostling for supremacy, dodgy deals with exiled Russians, and double-agenting on one of England’s most notorious facists, flat-capped Thomas Shelby finally finds himself in the bleak midwinter. He’s lost almost everyone that mattered to him, and is on a death wish to secure his legacy at all costs - whatever the body count. He’s ready to meet his maker, but an 11th hour hallucination turns the tables and leaves you on the edge of your seat, primed for a big screen production. Dark, dazzling, and epic. AS
Schitt’s Creek
I’ve watched this entire Emmy award-winning series from the top at least four times, and two scenes never fail to get me right in the ticker. The first is when Patrick sings an acapella rendition of Simply The Best and makes David - and us - fall completely in love. The second is the finale, their wedding. The whole town is there and there’s so much love in the room you can feel it radiating off the screen. But it’s when matriarch Moira Rose, resplendent in a Pope-like get up, chokes that has me gulping for air. The distinction between the cast and their characters dissolves as they all say goodbye. The perfect ending to a perfect show. AS
The Informer
Informer is a quiet, unhyped masterpiece that didn’t get a scintilla of the acclaim it deserved – not least for its incredible cinematography of London. Starring Paddy Considine (Gabe) and Nabhaan Rizman (Raza), and about a second generation British Pakistani living in East London who becomes a reluctant police informant with horrifying consquences, the show - executively produced by Sam Mendes - had an exquisitely poignant finale that always makes me cry. It’s Gabe and Raza on the tube; Gaba soothing Raza by taking him away from the horror they’ve both unleashed by taking him back to his happiest memories. It’s incredibly moving. Anna Van Praagh
Friends
Rachel got off the plane. After 10 seasons of ‘’we were on a break’’, three divorces and a baby, Ross and Rachel finally end up together. It’s the finale everyone wanted but not without a hint of jeopardy. In the end, all is well. Monica and Chandler are new parents to twins, Phoebe is married to Mike (Paul Rudd) and Joey, true to form, is still single. A final scene sees the friends leaving Monica’s apartment one last time and fans are left with a few seconds to reminisce in the empty space where they spent 236 beloved episodes. Sabrina Russello
The Bridge
The Bridge was the pinnacle of Nordic noir, with Sofia Helin’s performance as Saga Norén - the genius but socially-oblivious detective at its centre - the crowning jewel. Each murder mystery investigated is gripping, but over four series, Saga’s development as a person with (unmentioned but probable) Asperger’s is the show’s USP. She goes, bluntly and head on, through relationships, professional and family struggles, with her police work (and beautiful Porsche 911) her only consistency. So, for the final episode to show her throwing her police badge over the same bridge, it is a victory-over-self for Saga as well as coming full circle for the series. William Mata
The Shield
What’s the worst possible punishment for the worst possible maverick cop? Simple: after seven seasons of rampaging through Los Angeles killing and stealing and looting – with the standard “…but by Christ he gets results” getout – The Shield’s last three minutes finds Vic Mackey, having given up everything to stay out of jail, in a bad suit and tie, doing admin in an office cubicle, forever. He gets up. He sits down. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. And then, in the final, final second as we cut to the credits, he reaches in his drawer and pulls out a gun… Hamish MacBain
Gossip Girl
Over six seasons, five privileged teenagers sabotage media executives, ruin political careers and take on the Grimaldis. Their deeds are documented by Gossip Girl, an anonymous blogger whose identity is revealed in the finale amid a semi-accidental murder and a surprise wedding. A good way to measure the show’s cultural gravitas is by the cameos it scored while the revelations travel from phone to phone. Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York, appears right before Kristen Bell, the voice of Gossip Girl — who, in a deliciously meta twist, looks up to the camera and winks. William Hosie
The Jinx
There have been hundreds of True Crime series released over the last decade, but very few have come even remotely close to delivering the truly chilling twist of HBO’s 2015 thriller documentary series The Jinx. Over six nail-biting episodes, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki investigates three murders - the last of which happened 14 years before the show - all closely tied to Robert Durst, the son of a New York real estate magnate. Unbelievably, Durst agrees to be interviewed for the miniseries, a decision which comes to haunt him. The denouement of the show is so unbelievable, so shocking, and yet so ridiculously mundane that it would have been thrown out of any decent writers’ room. Elizabeth Gregory
Fleabag
“I love you,” Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s protagonist finally tells Hot Priest in the final episode of Fleabag - a rare moment of sincerity from a character who usually hides behind multiple layers of irony, cruelty, and self-deprecation in order to avoid saying what she really wants. “It’ll pass,” replies Andrew Scott’s alluring man of the cloth; the most quietly brutal response imaginable. As she finally collects herself and walks off into the darkness, there’s an impulse to trot after her like a scraggly fox, but Fleabag gently shakes her head - severing the fourth wall connection with her audience for the final time. It’s exactly the kind of genius subtlety the show nailed so brilliantly. El Hunt
This Country
As somebody who grew up in the arse-end-of-nowhere, surrounded by small hamlets that were genuinely called things like Tiddleywink and Cockadilly, I thought that This Country totally skewered the boredom and isolation of rural teenage-dom. From the bitter rivalries of scarecrow festival and menacing local gossips like Big Mandy, to the bright lights of nearby Bristol (and the woeful bus services that made it seem so very exciting) Kerry and Kurtan showed us the whole lot - and in keeping with its realist, mockumentary-style comedy, there’s no dramatic plot arc in final episode Harvest. Instead, the pair gradually spend it coming to terms with Vicar’s departure, before bidding him an emotional and selfless farewell. It’s a real tear-jerker when we learn that even Vicar - arguably the glue holding the entire village together - almost can’t bear to leave. EH
The Office
Whenever I’m sad or sick, I turn to the only remedy I know. Re-watching The Office clips on YouTube. The last episode specifically. It has everything – bad dates, Brent telling ex-colleagues to f**k off, TV ‘stitch ups.’ Mostly, I love it because Dawn and Tim, after years of eye contact and in-jokes, kiss for the first time. Soundtracked perfectly to Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ (arguably one of the best love songs). “The funniest show ever made and your favourite moment is the least funny part,” according to my boyfriend. True. Yet who can deny the joy when Slough’s beloved sales manager, who days before had reconciled with not knowing what a happy ending is...finally got his. Emma Firth
