So, that’s it for The West Wing. A slow shuffle off to the end. There were a couple of lovely moments in the last episodes, but that’s all they were, lovely moments. As much as seasons six and most of seven were a marked recovery from the awful fifth season, the last few episodes had nothing in them. A function of the drama – this isn’t the sort of fiction you can build to an explosive climax, because we all know how it has to end – exactly as it did, with a wind down.

It never got back to the days of seasons one and two when it won all those awards for a damn good reason, but still: this is the first and only TV show that I can make any sort of claim to have watched end to end (I joined in at the back end of season one, but I got the DVDs as damn fast as I could…). I’ve never actually had a TV show end that I really genuinely was sorry to see go before. It’s an odd feeling. I suspect it’ll be a long time before it happens to me again.