Ending series on a high tops viewers' expectations

PRESENT TENSE:IF YOU WATCHED the recent conclusion to The Clinic, you will know that it went not just with a bang, but also with a screech, a moan and a couple of uurghs. Ending in a frenzy of shootings and heart attacks and hostage-takings, its writers had clearly examined each potential cliffhanger carefully, deliberated over which one to use and then threw them all at the screen anyway. Then they found a few more hanging around the office and threw them at it too.

As the credits rolled, two of its major characters were on the verge of death. What, asked its loyal audience, would happen next? Within a week, it became clear. Nothing would happen next. That was it. The last of the series was its last ever episode, and the the show was deader than any of the characters.

And viewers were left deeply unsatisfied by the sudden end to a show which had, in a most un-Irish way, been cancelled in a way that denied the viewer even a vague sense of closure.

(Ten days later, by the way, the same happened to viewers in Finland, where The Clinic was also broadcast. They have long, dark winters there. Plenty of time to stew. Come the spring, RTÉ’s director-general will be bemused by the sudden arrival of long, angry letters from Helsinki.)

Nonetheless, there may be only one thing worse than a well-loved series that ends without warning – one that ends having given plenty of notice. Chances are, it will end unsatisfactorily because few television series figure out how to wrap things up. The particularly great ones, in fact, often end up crushed by expectations.

For instance, the weakness of the Seinfeldexit (a national event when shown broadcast in the US in 1998) became a joke in co-writer Larry David's most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Since that, ER almost got it right – with the crew standing at the entrance of the hospital as the sound of sirens gradually approached – only to botch it by letting the ambulances show up and get in the way.

There have been some fine exits, however. The final moment of The Sopranoswas stunning because it brutally undercut the viewer's expectations and instead leapt into a chasm of ambiguity. And the finale of Star Trek: The Next Generationwas artful and intelligent and among the most perfect pieces of science fiction yet broadcast on television.

Why talk about this now? Because, in just over a week from now, Lostwill begin its final series. A show which has been driven by a mysterious and much-discussed mythology will finally be forced to explain itself. The show will want to learn a lesson from a much-derided show that ended a short run on US television this week. The way in which Life on Mars– the American version of the British show – explained away its time travelling plot was so ridiculous that Bobby Ewing's appearance in the shower now has a companion in the annals of the absurd. Slate.com announced it as "the dumbest finale in TV history".

How dumb was it? This dumb: the lead character, it explained, had jumped from 2008 to life as a cop in 1973 cop because he was on board a virtual reality programme on a spaceship bound for Mars in 2035.

Take a moment, should you need to read that again.

Ironically, while reality television is derided, the likes of Big Brotherand The X-Factortrump fiction in their abilities to deliver a decent ending.

Everything about these shows is orientated towards the final episode. You might be disappointed with the outcome, but you can hardly doubt the climactic nature. Their final episodes comes following several weeks during which characters are whittled down gradually and tension is cranked up until someone walks off with fireworks in their ears and Simon Cowell’s talons on their shoulder.

Drama doesn't have it so neat. So much of it thrives on promise rather than delivery. That has been the problem for Lost.Its early couple of series were particularly brilliant not just because they wrapped Twilight Zonemini-episodes within a longer story arc, but because it was a master at tantalising the audience with glimpses at what might be happening, so that ultimately its success lay more in what the viewer thought was going on than was actually appearing on screen.

It hasn’t been able to quite sustain that tottering tower of mystery, but has held up well enough to make mild-obsessives out of most of its viewers. But it must now reach a satisfactory conclusion, and that is its biggest challenge. You have a couple of weeks if you want to catch up on that show’s storyline so far. You will not want to miss out on the complaints if it ends badly.

shegarty@irishtimes.com