10 TV Shows That Actually Stuck The Landing

But the one show that most persuasively stayed the course above all others? It has to be Six Feet Under.

Alan Ball's masterful drama about a family-operated funeral home in California bounced back from an uneven and divisive fourth season with a fifth and final one that turned out to be its very best.

Creator Alan Ball confronted the mortality of the Fisher family in unexpected and often devastating ways, leading up to a basically flawless series finale which is rightly held up by many TV critics as the all-time greatest.

As a perfect exclamation point to the show's five-season investigation into our collective engagement with - or aversion to - death, Ball made the ingenious decision to end Six Feet Under by revealing the future deaths of almost every major character.

In a Sia-backed climactic montage you'll need a heart of stone not to sob through, Ball gave audiences the most absolute, ultimate closure possible, showing us how the Fishers and those in their periphery lived the rest of their lives. It doesn't get any better than that.