“I feel deeply conflicted,” the show’s creator told The New Yorker. “I quite enjoy this period when we’re editing – where the whole season is there – but we haven’t put it out yet. I like the interregnum. And I also quite liked the period when my close collaborators and I knew that this was probably it, or this was it, but hadn’t had to face up to it in the world. It’s been a difficult decision, because the collaborations... they’ve just been so good.”

One of the biggest head-scratchers, says Armstrong, was figuring out a way to inform audiences that Succession was ending. Most of us weren’t expecting it. If you’d asked this writer, I’d have guessed that the dysfunctional Roy clan had at least two more years in them. Armstrong wondered what it might be like to keep the finale a secret, right up until the very end. Whatever the case, closing the curtain on a hit show at the height of its prime is a bold yet admirable move.

“HBO has been generous and would probably have done more seasons,” explained Armstrong, “and they have been nice about saying, ‘It’s your decision’. That’s nice, but it’s also a responsibility in the end – it feels quite perverse to stop doing it.”

Indeed, and these things are rarely allowed to happen. Everyone always wants more – studios, audiences, even the actors. And yet, 2023 might be the year when not one, but two of the biggest shows on television sign off early, on their own terms.

There are rumours – most of them coming from writers and cast members, including Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham – that Jason Sudeikis’s endearing, feel-good sports comedy, Ted Lasso, might also be on the way out.

A third season arrives on Apple TV+ on March 15, and the folks in charge have yet to confirm if it’s the last we’ll see of Sudeikis and Co. Story-wise, it makes sense to call time on Ted’s tenure at AFC Richmond. And, like Succession, wouldn’t it be something to watch this critically acclaimed, universally adored awards winner, bow out on top?

Few of them ever do. Even the best shows have ruined themselves by ignoring their sell-by-dates. Once a riveting, tightly-choregraphed hospital drama, ER dragged on for 15 years, finally coming to
an end after a backside-numbing 331 episodes (at least a hundred more than we deserved).

The Simpsons, on the air since 1989, is now in its 34th season – and boy, does it show. Even Seinfeld, largely considered one of the finest sitcoms ever made, stumbled on its ninth and final lap. And the less said about the last few seasons of Friends, the better.

Sometimes, television works best in small doses. John Cleese may have spoilt the fun recently by announcing a late-in-the-day revival, but it’s worth remembering that one of the reasons Fawlty Towers worked so well was because there was so little of it. Two seasons and 12 episodes – that’s it. That’s all we got.

Might there have been more had Cleese remained married to co-creator, writer and star, Connie Booth? Maybe. But Booth eventually stepped away from performing, and Cleese had Python business to attend to. It wasn’t meant to be.

The two-and-done season model probably inspired Ricky Gervais to switch the lights off in The Office before anyone else could. True, the US remake is largely superior, in almost every way, but it went on for too long (201 episodes) and, by the time it was put down, it had almost completely run out of steam. Gervais’s original – an undisputed classic which lasted just 14 episodes – didn’t have that problem.

Similarly, after three successful seasons, the awesome Lisa McGee retired her iconic Derry Girls before it could become a parody of itself (which, if we’re honest, almost happened in that final run).

Father Ted, meanwhile, called time on itself in spectacular fashion. In a week that marks the 25th anniversary of the death of the legendary Dermot Morgan – and the seventh of his treasured co-star, Frank Kelly – we recall how Ireland’s premier sitcom switched off at exactly the right time in exactly the right way.

There is only so long that audiences can enjoy a caricature, and Morgan had already expressed interest in hanging up his character’s collar ahead of a third and final season (apparently, he was afraid of being typecast). Creators and showrunners Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews knew this. What if, they imagined, our hapless, holy protagonist was finally offered a way out of the Beckett-esque purgatory that is Craggy Island?

What if, at the last minute, he rescinds the offer of a lifetime and decides to stay put? Indeed, Morgan’s Ted opted for a familiar sort of devil, and cooly accepted his fate: a lifetime of irritable nothingness surrounded by loveable eejits and irritable head-wreckers. We know that Ted and Co are still on that island. They’re probably sitting down to tea as we speak. But we don’t need to see it.

Indeed, Linehan and Mathews’s sitcom continues to spread its magic, not just because it’s a great show, but because it never allowed itself to be a terrible one.

Indeed, our favourite tales deserve proper endings. The sooner they come about, the better. See Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, a series that prioritised story and characterisation over audience and critical demand. In less than six hours of television, Waller-Bridge did something that most other shows struggle to achieve over six years.

She devised, depicted and successfully completed a two-act television marvel in which a bruised, broken and emotionally battered protagonist eventually figures out how to be a better person. Its ending ranks among the finest I’ve ever seen, and though fans have always cried out for more, Waller-Bridge is done. She has moved on. Fleabag remains a lesson in how to do TV properly.

If Waller-Bridge is queen, then Damon Lindelof is king, and his ambitious sci-fi drama The Leftovers is another fine example of a show that ended things on its own terms.

In just three short seasons, The Leftovers managed to tell a significantly tall tale about a grieving community struggling to make sense of an inexplicable global disaster. It did so without ever annoying, alienating or testing the patience of its audience. Today, Lindelof’s series ranks among the greatest of all time, up there with The Wire, Sopranos and Breaking Bad.

Perhaps the key to its success was that Lindelof – co-creator of Lost – knows first-hand what it’s like to be involved in a series that spiralled out of control. Apparently, HBO wanted more of The Leftovers, but Lindelof put the story first. It paid off.

I’ll miss Succession. I won’t know what to do with myself if Ted Lasso leaves AFC Richmond. But I’d sooner mourn the end of a tremendous story, than sit and watch my favourite show turn bad.

Time to switch off: Five shows that overstayed their welcome

Friends (1994–2004)
Somewhere around the middle of season eight, it became glaringly obvious that Marta Kauffman and David Crane’s iconic 1990s sitcom had run out of ideas. Joey started to fancy Rachel, David the scientist guy returned from Minsk again to woo Phoebe and poor Ross had become an idiot. Jennifer Aniston and Co made it watchable, but it was too late – the magic had disappeared.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)
How do you spoil a game- changing supernatural drama? By killing off the main character at the end of season five and bringing her back from the dead at the beginning of season six. Sloppy move, and Joss Whedon’s beloved Buffy never fully recovered.

Love / Hate (2010–2014)
Stuart Carolan’s angsty gangster soap peaked with a triumphant third run that had the entire country on the edge of its seat. The thing is, there was only ever going to be one end for Tom Vaughan-Lawlor’s Nidge. Carolon took the slow, scenic route, and the remaining two seasons bored us to tears.

House of Cards (2013–2018)
The first proper Netflix smash, House of Cards should have ended after Kevin Spacey’s Frank took the Oval Office in season two. Mission accomplished. There was nowhere left to go – but someone forgot to tell the writers, and , amidst a wave of controversy surrounding the show’s leading man, Netflix finally put us out of our misery after six seasons.

Scrubs (2001–2010)
Bill Lawrence’s endearing hospital comedy lost the run of itself after it began treating the medical side of things as an afterthought. Plus, the jokes started to suck. Pity.

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