10 TV Shows That Went One Season Too Long
4. Oz
Along with Sex and the City and The Sopranos, Oz is one of the TV shows which helped cement HBO's status as the king of glossy, high-quality small-screen entertainment in the late '90s.
The prison drama was widely acclaimed for its incredible ensemble cast and gritty, unflinching portrayal of life inside America's prison system.
But it's also fair to say that Oz became increasingly silly in its final years, from season four's ill-advised ageing pill subplot - where inmates could lose time off their sentences by taking a pill which prematurely aged them - to the borderline-comical parade of murder and betrayal in seasons five and six.
As such, it was clear that Oz had run out of steam by the end of season five, but it plodded on with one extra volume of episodes, focused on inmate Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) finally being paroled from Oz, only to quickly return after being set up to violate his parole.
It was pure soap opera nonsense - a lazy attempt to squeeze another season's worth of drama out of a story that felt ready to end in season five.
Clearly, season five could've just combined the best material from the last two seasons into a more coherent whole, rather than over-egging itself with an additional eight episodes.