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With the upcoming fourth season of Netflix's Atypical being its last, here are five more lauded series that have either just ended or will soon.
NBC's widely acclaimed series This is Us premiered in 2016. Its fifth season ended in May this year, and it has been announced that the forthcoming Season 6 will be its last. This is Us is a multigenerational family saga across different time spans. The central story revolves around a white couple in the 1980s (played by Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore) who lose one of their triplets in a premature delivery. They adopt an African American baby born the day before in lieu of the child they lost. The present-day storyline looks at the lives of the three children (played by Sterling K Brown, Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley), now grown up. Throughout its run, This is Us has consistently acquired both critical praise and Emmys, and is a deeply emotional family drama.
Issa Rae's HBO show Insecure premiered in 2016. The series will come to an end with its upcoming fifth season. Created by and starring Issa Rae (along with Yvonne Orji), Insecure examines the lived experiences of black women in America. Rae and Orji play Issa and Molly, who have to manoeuvre through their personal and professional lives and entanglements, while also dealing with the very real and specific (and underrepresented) issues of being an African American woman in the modern-day USA.
Dead to Me premiered on Netflix in 2019, followed by a second season in 2020. In July 2020, it was announced that its third season (which began filming in May this year) would be its final one. The black comedy stars Christina Applegate as Jen, whose husband was killed in a car crash, sending her and her sons' lives into disarray, and Linda Cardellini as Judy, who drove the car that hit Jen's husband. Through the first season, as the two women become very close friends, Judy's identity as her husband's killer is hidden from Jen. In the second season, the two are thrown together once again when they become embroiled in another unnatural death. One can only imagine what a third (and final) season would bring these two volatile and magnetic women.
The first season of NBC's Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist ran just as the pandemic began, but its second season managed to come through right on time in January 2021. The show is a musical comedy about a young software drone named Zoey (Jane Levy), who, through a freak incident, is suddenly able to hear people's innermost thoughts sung to her as major production numbers. Featuring an unbeatable soundtrack, unabashed emotions and some golden-throated performances (Skylar Astin, Alex Newell, Peter Gallagher and Lauren Graham, among others), it came as a shock when Zoey's was cancelled after two seasons in June this year, despite acclaim and Emmys talk.
Netflix's Grace and Frankie, starring the great Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, premiered in 2015; its seventh season, which is still filming, will be its last. Fonda is Grace and Tomlin is Frankie, two women who have never really liked each other but who suddenly find themselves in the same boat when their husbands, Robert and Sol, declare that they are in love with each other. Both women are handed a divorce, and they must now not only live together but also find a way to be friends and each other's support systems.