All’s well that ends well, wrote Shakespeare. The same man (unless you believe in the conspiracy theory of The Bard by committee) also wrote “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
So what are we to make of that very modern writing dilemma?
To end something slowly and well, ah that’s the thing.
Not via a playwright (although plays can often be long enough) but for the show-runner of the multi-series drama.
These episodic dramas which, often through the demands of US television, go on for five or six series very often have one thing in common – they start with rapturously received reviews and end in reviled finales. Worse, if you’re House of Cards, and the star and executive producer is Kevin Spacey. Sometimes the ending is inevitable. When Bartlet’s Presidency was over, so was The West Wing.
