‘The magnificent, the magical, the marvellous!’ It’s TV’s happiest endings

Gold dances, the Good Friday agreement and standup superstardom … get ready to blub because here are the most heartwarming denouements in TV history

Warning: this article contains spoilers

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel

What does perfect 50s housewife Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) do after her husband leaves? She gets drunk and flashes her boobs on stage while doing an impromptu comedy set. It’s impossible not to root for her from this moment on. With the help of her unlikely manager, Susie Myers (Alex Borstein), she embarks on a standup career with the odds constantly stacked against her. Finally, Midge makes her breakthrough moment happen on a late-night show.

“I want a big life,” she tells the studio audience, who have just been howling at her jokes. “They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman. Maybe. But you know what’s really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen.” All of her family members – who had been so against this career – are there cheering with pride. Gordon Ford (Reid Scott) then introduces her to the world: “The magnificent, the magical, the marvellous Mrs Maisel.”

But the real gut-punch moment? When Midge looks over to Susie, who has a tear in her eye and her hand on her heart. The final scene jumps to decades later, with the hugely successful pair joking over the phone as they both watch an old episode of Jeopardy. Hollie Richardson

30 Rock

The brilliance of the 30 Rock finale – aired as two episodes back-to-back in 2013 – really begins halfway through the closing series. That’s when Liz Lemon gets married and embarks, via adoption, on motherhood, both milestones at which a traditional sitcom would usually end a show centred on a female protagonist. But not for Lemon, and not for creator Tina Fey, who ends it with TGS (the show within a show) being uncancelled and brought back for one last episode – an appropriately meta end for the show itself – so that everyone else’s storylines can be tied up. Liz is shown to be back at work and realising she needs to have work and not just family in her life or she’ll live on a knife-edge of insanity as much as she did when it was just work.

It gave us callbacks (even unto St Elsewhere), the full gag quotient (plus The Rural Juror song), Kenneth’s ascendance (possibly transcendence), and closure. Even Pete got a brief year of happiness before the epilogue. Above all, it gave us Jack’s lovely speech to Liz from the boat, which she eventually interrupts to tell him she platonically loves him too. Affectionate respect has never been so beautifully captured. See-through dishwasher for all! Lucy Mangan

Detectorists

There was rarely anything tricksy about the narrative of Detectorists – it was based round a set of simple, binary storylines concerning relationships, parenthood and mild discord over metal-detecting territory. All the same, Lance and Andy were deceptively complex characters and the show’s seemingly still emotional waters ran deep. It soon became clear that we were being offered one of the most charming and convincing depictions of friendship in television history.

The show’s conclusion was gently audacious, suggesting continuity as the happiest of endings. Andy and Becky buy a delightful, dilapidated house. Toni is preparing to move in with Lance. Andy and Lance don’t actually need anything they don’t already have. Friends, lovers, a pub nearby, modest roofs over their heads, a shared passion and perhaps most importantly of all, each other. Their gold dance is, at all times, right in front of them. Phil Harrison

Derry Girls

“If YES put an X in this square.” The Derry Girls had to grow up sometime, and so it came to pass, after Erin and Orla made it through the wildest 18th birthday/joint first communion party ever – theme: literary monkeys – that they all got to vote on the Good Friday agreement. For a show so consistently hilarious, Lisa McGee’s cracker comedy finally turned on a sixpence into the most beautifully poignant piece of historical analysis. I was weeping with joy from the moment Granda Joe says: “What if no one else has to die? What if all this becomes a ghost story you’ll tell your weans one day. A ghost story they’ll hardly believe.” By the time all of them chose yes, chose hope, chose to end the Troubles that were all they’d ever known, I was a goner. Of course it was soundtracked to the Cranberries – the only possible choice – and of course, in the ultimate cameo, Chelsea Clinton got their letter decades late in the closing seconds! As Michelle said, being a Derry Girl is a fuckin’ state of mind, and I’ll never stop loving them. Sláinte! Kate Abbott

Hacks

If you’ve watched the finale of Hacks this might be a hard sell. Major spoiler incoming: the final episode of this biting showbiz satire ended with our Joan Rivers-inspired antiheroine Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis, and planning her death by assisted dying. Fans had already noted the morbid foreshadowing all season, but it still felt like a brutal plot twist – not only for Deborah but for Ava (Hannah Einbinder), her protege, surrogate daughter and sometime pretend girlfriend.

Frankly it was all a bit triggering, not just because I lost a parent to cancer, but because Hacks is really funny and this was absolutely the unfunniest thing that could have happened. But in a way – stay with me here – Hacks did have a happy ending. At the 11th hour, Deborah changed her mind and decided to hang on a little longer and write another comedy special, delivering one of the best lines in the whole damn series: “I may not have 30 years – but I think I have another hour.” I was, like most professional journalists, watching the finale from an airport Starbucks, ugly crying. When I heard that line I got instant chills. I stopped sobbing, let out a gasp, then started crying again – but this time it was happy tears. The thought of Deborah writing one final bitchy, tell-all special really made me smile. Hannah J Davies

Only Fools and Horses

Like one of Del Boy’s dodgy deals, Only Fools and Horses gave us two happy endings for the price of one. The first was 1996’s iconic fairytale finale: an antique watch makes Del and Rodney millionaires – cue a fever dream montage of the brothers living in the lap of luxury. Yet for the elder Trotter, the giddy euphoria was tinged with wrenching nostalgia for his old life, resulting in a profoundly bittersweet conclusion that cemented the show’s place in the British pop cultural canon. Then came the 2000s reboot: three Christmas specials, widely derided as knock-offs. Still, the eventual denouement – which involves a more modest windfall, some closure for Rodney and a long-awaited baby for him and Cassandra – is actually more uplifting and heartwarming than the original. A less artful ending, undoubtedly, but I’m still glad we said goodbye with a more relatable kind of happiness. Rachel Aroesti

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

How to end one of TV’s most gleefully daft comedies? With a ludicrously elaborate set-piece episode, featuring the most OTT version ever of the annual event where the characters go all out to double cross each other in a heist – naturally. This double-bill farewell was a glorious exercise in fan-pleasing that packed in a whistlestop tour of the show’s most significant moments (the warehouse where they solved their first case! The interview room behind the best ever skit – where Peralta made suspects sing Backstreet Boys!), joy-inducing returns of fave characters and the heartfelt emotional moment that had been brewing for eight seasons – Captain Holt telling Peralta he’d be proud to have a son like him. It all ended with a quiet, beautiful moment – the lights being turned out on the precinct as they stepped into the lift together for one last time. Then they threw in a bonus scene set a year later with the crew announcing that they’d get back together every year for their annual heist. Cue a last sketch, including bad magic, hammy acting and one final rousing call of the team motto: Nine-Nine! Now that’s how you say goodbye. Alexi Duggins

Sex and the City

Things weren’t looking great as Sex and the City careened and Carried its way through its too-long final season. Even Charlotte’s dog was starting to look exhausted. But writer Michael Patrick King and this beautiful cast of women really pulled it out of the Birkin for the two-parter finale in which Carrie has to choose between moving to Paris with a handsome millionaire, or staying in New York with a different handsome millionaire (look, we’ve all been there).

There’s breathy old Hollywood dialogue that somehow works. There’s Sarah Jessica Parker galloping across wet cobbles to moody French hip-hop. And if you didn’t get goosebumps from Miranda gripping Mr Big’s hairy, Rolex-clad forearm and gasping “Go get our girl!” you’re as dead inside as the second movie. Dylan B Jones

Parks and Recreation

Unlike most TV “happy ever afters” which can seem rushed, Parks and Recreation treats us to a two-part finale which jumps forward in time not just once but several times, as it lovingly explores what happens next to Leslie Knope and our favourite gang of Pawnee government employees.

Each character gets their storyline tied up in a way that is entirely befitting of their personality and arc – and of course, it would end with Amy Poehler’s overachieving Knope possibly becoming president of the United States. We also finally get some karmic justice for Jerry/Garry/Larry, the perennial office scapegoat, who becomes a much-beloved mayor of Pawnee and lives to the ripe old age of 100.

The ending is sweet, offbeat and supremely wholesome – all the things we’ve come to expect from Parks and Rec over the years. And this cuddly sitcom couldn’t have ended in a better way – as a tribute to the power of “friends, waffles, work” (Knope’s life priorities), right to the very last credits. Ann Lee

Mr Inbetween

So many classic shows have been led by a monstrous male character we secretly root for – Tony Soprano, Walter White, Doc Martin – and the protagonist in Scott Ryan’s flawless crime drama is up there with the best/worst. Ray Shoesmith has bludgeoned and gouged his way through Sydney’s criminal underworld but, in the final episode, he’s given up killing to become a rural cab driver. When two hoodlums who mean Ray harm get in the car, Ryan makes a brilliant creative decision: the last shot is Ray breaking the fourth wall, eyeballing the camera and grinning. Ray knows what we want. He’s going to horribly murder them! Hoorah! Jack Seale

The Leftovers

From the ashes of one of the bleakest television programmes ever made (in a nutshell: 2% of the world’s population goes missing, and those left behind go mad with grief) came a beautifully hopeful ending. A long-separated couple reunite. The woman says she visited an alternative dimension where the missing 2% live happily in peace. It almost certainly isn’t the truth, but the story brought her comfort. The man says he believes her. They cry. They hold hands. They smile. For a show that never had any intention of explaining its central mystery, this ending – an emotional truth landing harder than a logical one – was absolutely perfect. Stuart Heritage

Gavin and Stacey

It’s the drama, Mick, I just love it. There’s a reason why the Anglo-Welsh romcom’s finale became Britain’s most-watched scripted show in more than two decades. Five years after Nessa proposed to Smithy, nuptials loomed – except it was boring Sonia who the lovable lummox was marrying, not his love-hate soulmate. What was occurring? After a spine-tingling intervention at the altar, Smithy called it off and dashed to Southampton docks, where Nessa was about to set sail on a cargo ship. Now it was his turn to pop the question. The pair married in Barry while 21m viewers wept with joy into their Quality Street tins. Tidy, cracking and well lush. Michael Hogan