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The Handmaid's Tale is finally wrapping up with season six.
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00:00Deciding when to end a TV show is incredibly tricky.
00:03Race to the end and you can wind up with a very clearly rushed catastrophe,
00:07but let it drag on for years longer than the story needs
00:09and you get something that fizzles out long after its audience have moved on.
00:13And so while fans will usually be sad to see their favourite shows go regardless,
00:17these 10 TV series feel like they're getting an ending
00:19that's been one hell of a long time coming indeed.
00:23I'm Cy for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 TV shows that are finally ending.
00:27Number 10, The Walking Dead.
00:30It's often repeated among The Walking Dead's long-suffering fans
00:33that the show itself has become a shambling zombie that simply refuses to die,
00:37but after 11 seasons, it will finally air its last ever episode on November 20th.
00:42Even though many have dubbed the last few seasons a fair return to form,
00:45The Walking Dead is a show that clearly just kept going
00:48far beyond its actual creative threshold because the ratings remained relatively high.
00:53But when protagonist Rick Grimes departed the show midway through 2018 Season 9,
00:57the ratings entered a seemingly irreversible death spiral,
01:01with a recent episode garnering an all-time low of just 1.55 million viewers,
01:05compared to its all-time high of 17.29 million for the Season 5 premiere.
01:10Though AMC already has numerous spin-off projects in the works,
01:14one centred around Daryl and Carol, another around Rick and Michonne,
01:17and one focused on Maggie and Negan,
01:19it'll nevertheless be a relief to see the flagship show finally put out to pasture,
01:24many years after it reached both its narrative and ratings peak.
01:27Number 9, The Flash.
01:29When The CW's The Flash launched back in 2014,
01:33who could have predicted that it would run for a whole nine seasons,
01:35and in turn become the longest-running Arrowverse series,
01:38beating out even Arrow itself?
01:41Back in March, The CW confirmed that The Flash was wrapping up with a shortened ninth season,
01:45and given that it's the only Arrowverse show left standing,
01:48it will also effectively bring the entire franchise to an end.
01:51And it's certainly long past due.
01:53Though The Flash enjoyed strong reviews and ratings during its first few seasons,
01:57things eventually tapered off, and in Season 7 last year,
02:00the ratings finally dipped below 1 million viewers for the first time.
02:04After three or four seasons, The Flash settled for being too much of the same,
02:08and it became increasingly clear the central cast members had largely lost their enthusiasm for their roles,
02:13beyond a paycheck, of course.
02:14For all but the most hardcore fans, audience passion had dried up too.
02:19Number 8, The Crown.
02:20Though it's only premiered back in 2016,
02:23it feels like The Crown has been on our screens for a damn long time,
02:27perhaps because its end point has seemed within sight for almost three years now.
02:31In early 2020, creator Peter Morgan stated that the historical drama series would end with its upcoming fifth season,
02:37deeming it the perfect time and place to stop.
02:39But a few months later, Morgan backpedaled and revealed that the show would indeed run for an additional season,
02:45with six seasons having been his original plan when conceiving the show.
02:48Season 5, set to premiere in November, will begin the show's final arc for Queen Elizabeth now portrayed in the later decades of her life.
02:55Season 6 began filming in August, meaning it likely won't air until late 2023 at the earliest,
03:00but it's nevertheless reassuring to know that the acclaimed series has an end point.
03:04Despite the sure temptation to drag the show on in an attempt to forensically detail every major event in Elizabeth's life up to her recent death,
03:12it's good to know that Morgan will be employing a little restraint.
03:15Number 7, Riverdale
03:17It's been something of a running joke that nobody hates Riverdale more than the actors starring in it,
03:21and with the show being renewed for a seventh and final season back in March,
03:25many remarked that the young cast members were finally free from this commitment.
03:28There's little denying that the CW's supernatural drama series started to go off the rails in its third season,
03:34with a glut of increasingly silly storylines,
03:36though fans are sharply divided on whether this was a good thing or not.
03:39To some, it elevated Riverdale into the canon of guilty pleasure schlock,
03:43while some felt it stray too far from the comparative modesty of its earlier seasons.
03:47In recent years in particular, the Riverdale cast hasn't made much of an effort to disguise their own half-joking disdain for the series,
03:54and given that many of the primary cast members are gaining momentum outside of the show,
03:57their eagerness to move on is understandable.
04:00There will be those who miss Riverdale and its flagrant trashiness,
04:03yet its time to wrap up feels thoroughly overdue.
04:06Number 6, Stranger Things
04:07On paper, Stranger Things doesn't feel like it's majorly outstayed its welcome,
04:12but due to both the big-budget nature of its production and the pandemic,
04:16its four seasons to date have been spread over six years.
04:19One of the key problems with the show in recent years has been the passage of time.
04:23The four seasons to date have taken place over just two and a half years,
04:27despite the central cast members having all noticeably aged considerably more per the series' shooting schedule.
04:32And though Season 5 will reportedly have a time jump of some sort,
04:35it feels like the credibility of these youngsters both being youngsters and remaining in Hawkins will reach snapping point if it continues on much longer.
04:43Plus, Season 4 so brilliantly set the stage for an epic apocalyptic final season that going on any longer would feel like a massive mistake.
04:50At least in that regard, the Duffers appear to have mapped things out and conceived Season 4 and 5 as effectively a two-part finale centred around the villainous Vecna.
04:58Here's to hoping they stick the landing.
05:01Number five, Grey's Anatomy.
05:03To be clear, no, you haven't missed any sort of official announcement about Grey's Anatomy finally coming to an end,
05:08but as of its current 19th season, it's clear that Shonda Rhimes' medical drama series has entered its endgame phase.
05:14Though its ratings have declined substantially since its peak in 2006's Season 3, where it regularly pulled in over 20 million viewers,
05:22the recent 18th season still averaged more than 4 million viewers per episode.
05:26That longevity is largely credited to one person, star Ellen Pompeo,
05:31who has appeared as protagonist Doctor Meredith Grey in almost all of the show's 400 episodes to date.
05:36Pompeo and Rhimes have stated numerous times that the show will come to an end when Pompeo is ready,
05:41and given that the upcoming 19th season will see Pompeo only appear physically in eight episodes,
05:46while still narrating all of them, the writing feels very much on the wall.
05:50Pompeo is reducing her role to work on a new drama series for Hulu,
05:53which will mark her first major non-Meredith acting role since Grey's Anatomy began back in 2005.
06:00Ergo, putting two and two together, it seems that Grey's Anatomy will likely end within the next few years.
06:06Number four, Community.
06:08If you're thinking that Community wrapped up its sixth season run all the way back in 2015,
06:12remember that this wasn't ever the plan of creator Dan Harmon.
06:15Ever since the Season 2 episode Paradigms of Human Memory birthed the line six seasons in a movie,
06:20fans have championed the idea of Community lasting long enough to fulfil that prophecy.
06:25And just recently, Peacock announced that the Community movie is indeed finally happening,
06:29with most of the original cast all confirmed to return.
06:33The statuses of Yvette Nicole Brown and the ever-busy Donald Glover are meanwhile currently unknown,
06:38though hopefully they can at least be corralled for a cameo to decisively tie their character arcs off.
06:43It's safe to say that, in finally delivering six seasons and a movie,
06:46this will almost certainly be the final piece of the Community puzzle,
06:50a dew-eyed reunion which hopefully provides fans with the closure they deserve
06:53around 15 years after it first began airing.
06:57Number three, Mock the Week.
06:59Mock the Week is an undeniable institution of British TV comedy,
07:03a topical panel show which launched in 2005 and,
07:06offering up a more irreverent riff on Have I Got News For You,
07:09quickly became a major rating success for the BBC.
07:12Viewership has remained relatively consistent throughout the show's run,
07:15yet this past summer it was revealed that Mock the Week was finally coming to an end,
07:19with its current 21st season.
07:21The BBC's official reasoning for the cancellation was to create room for new shows,
07:25yet many industry commentators noted that the decision reflected
07:28a general decline of panel shows over the last few years.
07:31For one, panel shows now have to compete with the immediacy of social media,
07:35which is a losing battle given that they're typically taped a day or two before airing.
07:39Mock the Week's formula also feels rather long in the tooth in 2022,
07:43and with the decline of shock comedy the series was known for during its peak with Frankie Boyle
07:48many years ago, the writing has been on the wall for quite some time.
07:51Nothing can ever take away what a cultural monolith Mock the Week was for the British public,
07:56but it's been time to go for quite a while.
07:58Number two, The Handmaid's Tale.
08:00The Handmaid's Tale was an undeniable cultural juggernaut during its first two seasons,
08:05once a massive critical and award success, and a watercaller show that everybody was talking about.
08:10Yet the series, adapted from Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel,
08:14is also another classic case of a hit TV show that just didn't know when to stop,
08:19as it became clear with each passing season that the narrative
08:21was being artificially elongated past its natural end point.
08:25Since season three, The Handmaid's Tale has frustratingly spun its wheels time and time again,
08:30enough that even Elizabeth Moss' outstanding performance can't entirely prop it up.
08:34And so there was a sense of relief when Hulu recently announced that the sixth season,
08:38due to air next year, will be its last.
08:41This runs counter to showrunner Bruce Miller's original vision for a 10-season run,
08:45which given its current trajectory would surely have been excruciating.
08:49That won't be the absolute last we see of Atwood's universe on the small screen though,
08:52as Miller is already prepping an adaptation of her recent sequel novel, The Testaments.
08:57Number one, The Good Fight.
08:59It's incredibly tough to predict how a spin-off series will do.
09:02They can either be Frasier and arguably outperform their source material,
09:06or more commonly they struggle to retain the original fanbase, no matter how good they are.
09:10And so when a spin-off to legal drama series The Good Wife premiered in 2017,
09:15few expected it to get anywhere close to the original series seven-season run.
09:19But never underestimate the appeal of the great Christine Baranski,
09:22as The Good Fight recently began airing its sixth and final season.
09:26Yet it's not unfair to say that the recent seasons haven't quite matched the catty brilliance of the earlier
09:31ones, even if it's remained consistently entertainingly absurd.
09:34Six Seasons is an incredibly respectable run for a spin-off that could so easily have fallen off of
09:39a cliff after a year or two. Whilst many could watch Baranski play Diane Lockhart forever,
09:44best to close things off before there's a more noticeable decline in quality.
09:49And that's the list. Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below.
09:53Which of these shows are you going to miss the most when it finally does end?
09:56And let us know of any other shows that are currently ramping down.
10:00Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
10:02subscribe and hit that notification bell.
10:05I've been Cy for WhatCulture, and have a good week.
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