Y
ou may not have liked the Kill-
ing Eve ending. It was on BBC1
last night and the post mor-
tems have already begun,
with fans who over four years
and four series have followed
the will-they-won’t-they relationship
between the assassin Villanelle ( Jodie
Comer) and the intelligence officer Eve
(Sandra Oh) feeling disappointed. They
invested a lot of time and emotional
energy in this show, so expectations
were high.
Endings are notoriously difficult
on television and can provoke a fierce
backlash — the Game of Thrones finale
is still causing angry debate three
years after it went out. There is a peti-
tion to remake series eight with “com-
petent writers”.
As well as Killing Eve, Abi Morgan’s
hugely popular divorce-lawyer drama
The Split is about to reach the end of
the road. So how can you say goodbye
in a way that doesn’t alienate those
who have been with you all the way?
Rise to the challenge and you win
millions of viewers. Peaky Blinders —
starring Cillian Murphy as Tommy
Shelby — went out in a blaze of Brum-
mie glory last month, grabbing over-
night viewing figures of 3.3 million — up
500,000 from the previous week’s 2.8
million. Luther — a BBC1 crime show
also on air for eight years — had over-
nights of 4.8 million for its finale in
- The ending to beat is the M.A.S.H.
finale in the US in 1983, which pulled in
an astonishing 106 million viewers and
remained the most watched broadcast
in US history until the 2010 Superbowl.
In 1996, when the Only Fools and Horses
finale was screened, more than 24 mil-
lion people tuned in to watch Del Boy
strike it rich at last. Bodyguard’s conclu-
sion 22 years later broke drama records
with 17 million viewers.
Fleabag gave a masterclass in how to
do an ending, with Phoebe Waller-
Bridge in a bus shelter with an urban
fox. It was bittersweet and in keeping
with the programme, but it had only
run for two series so was easier to
round off. Mad Men decided to end by
being mysterious, while The Sopranos
just went for a fade to black, with an
unanswered question: is Tony Soprano
dead? The show’s creator, David Chase,
is tired of talking about it, saying:
“Whether Tony Soprano is alive or
dead is not the point.”
The Peaky Blinders producer Caryn
Mandabach explains that it’s hard for
TV writers to reach a satisfying conclu-
sion. “The difference between film and
TV is that a film’s hero has a problem
that can be solved in two hours, while
a TV hero has to have a problem that
can’t be solved, otherwise you can’t get
more than one series,” she says. “Writ-TELEVISION
ers put a lot of wheels in place and
keep them spinning and then have to
stop them all at the same time in a sat-
isfactory way.”
Jane Featherstone, an executive pro-
ducer of The Split, agrees. “For Spooks,
Hustle, Life on Mars and Broadchurch
we didn’t know what the endings were
going to be,” she says. “The Split is unu-
sual in that its writer Abi Morgan knew
she wanted to explore the question
‘Can you have a good divorce?’ in three
seasons. As it became increasingly suc-
cessful the BBC kept asking us to do
more, but she knew exactly how she
wanted the story to end.”
At its most extreme this “keep writ-
ing as long as they want it” philosophy
means a series such as the US mystery
drama Lost, which was conceived as a
three-series story by JJ Abrams and
Damon Lindelof, became such a hit
that the ABC network tried to extend its
run indefinitely. They eventuallyagreed to let the team end the show,
Lindelof told the entertainment web-
site Collider in 2020. “I just said to [the
ABC president] Steve McPherson,
‘Thank you. This is what’s best for the
show,’ and he said, ‘We were thinking
ten seasons.’ We’re halfway through
season three, so how do you even think
we’re going to get to ten?” The eventual
conclusion — wrapping up all the plot-
lines in an “it was all a dream” reveal
— attracted so much abuse that Lin-
delof deleted his Twitter account.
There was fan rage with Line of Duty
too — they hated the revelation about
the true identity of the villainous mas-
termind H, although a respectable
12 million people switched on. Those
figures are increasingly rare, says Ste-
phen Price, a ratings analyst at Broad-
cast. “The launches are events and
then they drift away. Even Downton
Abbey didn’t have much of a boost —
the people who normally watched itThe Split and Killing
Eve are over — but
finishing a show is
notoriously hard to
pull off. What are
the rules for a
successful end? By
Stephen Armstrong
Game of Thrones fans are
still angry about the lastepisode three years on
Breaking up is hard to do Barry
Atsma and Nicola Walker in The SplitTHE ART OF SAYING
GOODBYE
12 24 April 2022