10 TV Shows That Actually Stuck The Landing
5. The Wire
The Wire's fifth and final season certainly had its wobbly moments - particularly the whole fake serial killer subplot - but course-corrected itself expertly in its closing episodes.
David Simon's peerless crime drama series may not have been an awards darling throughout its run, yet received near-universal acclaim for its journalistic eye for detail and realistic depiction of the Baltimore drug trade - Simon being a former police reporter himself.
The show had such a clear-eyed, unsentimental approach throughout its entire run that it was difficult to imagine Simon getting gooey at the end, and indeed, the series finale stuck true to his bluntly cynical impression of inner-city life.
This isn't to say that every character had a miserable ending, but simply that Simon depicted life going on - cops and criminals alike continued to do their symbiotic thing, and despite how much we as viewers had witnessed, little in the grand scheme had actually changed at all.