A late thought on what it feels like to film my final episodes of a show that’s no longer the one I joined.
June 2026 : 5 min read - Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
I've been thinking about my current role as a multi-season TV series. Not in any flattering sense. More in the way you look back at a long-running show as your own run on it is ending, and notice how much has shifted from the pilot.
Eight series in, my character is finally being written out. I'm in the last few episodes. My finale is being filmed.
The Pilot
The pilot was July 2018. I was 50, fresh from redundancy at my previous company. I had a family at home, a mortgage that wasn't paid off, and not many options I was qualified for in my immediate area. The company that offered me a role was a two and a half hour drive away. I took it.
The premise of the show was that I'd be away from home three days a week, initially for 12 months, staying in the same hotel, eating the same supermarket snacks in the same room, and driving back on a Thursday night to a family I'd see for a few days before doing it again.
I watched the pilot back in my head recently. It wasn't the show I'd have written if I'd had a choice. It was the show I needed to be in.
Luckily I survived the pilot.
Series One and Two
The first two series were the seasons of the long commute. Up at five on a Tuesday morning. Hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, long days in the office, the same staff at the same hotel learning my name. Buying the same meals from the same supermarket on the same corner became part of the routine. The drive home on a Thursday evening that I was simultaneously looking forward to and too exhausted to enjoy.
The work itself was interesting enough. The team was forming. The role was new for me, the company was figuring out where I fit, my character developing, my story arc just starting. There were stories worth telling.
But the dominant feeling of those early seasons was tiredness. Being away from my family was the cost the show was charging me to be in it.
The plot twist
Series three is when the show changed completely. March 2020. Lockdown. The hotels closed. The commute stopped. Everyone in the company was working from home, including me. Suddenly the show I was in was a different show. Same characters, same premise, completely different setting.
For me, lockdown was a gift. I wasn't going to say that to anyone at the time, because the wider context was grim and millions of people were having a very different experience. But the shift to remote working solved the single biggest problem with the show. I was home. I could see my family in the evenings. I could think about what I was working on without spending two nights a week in a hotel room or driving back from one. The work didn't change. The conditions did. And the conditions had been the bit hurting most.
The hybrid era
Series four through six were the hybrid years. Some days at home, some days in the office, one night away every couple of weeks. The rhythm settled. The team grew. The role evolved. I developed a team whose progress is one of the things I'm proudest of from this whole stretch. The work was familiar enough to be efficient and varied enough to stay interesting.
The show's popularity was also increasing, the audience growing and my character was playing a key role.
If I were writing the show as fiction, series four through six would be the seasons where the protagonist finds his stride. Not the most dramatic seasons, but the ones where the show has settled into what it's actually about.
Series seven
Series seven is when the drift started. New showrunners and script writers. Different priorities. The return-to-office push gaining momentum. Storylines that had run for years getting quietly retired. Old characters either being written out or moving to different shows. New characters joining who hadn't been part of the original premise. My own character's motivations were drifting from the main story. The script was changing around me. The viewing figures were declining. The show I'd settled into wasn't quite the show I was watching from the inside.
Series eight
Series eight is my final season. We're in it now. The remaining episodes are being filmed. The show has been told this is my last one.
Three things about filming your final episodes of a long-running show.
The first is that the cast around you is a mixture. Some are veterans, the ones who started with the pilot, or who joined in the early series and have been part of the journey almost as long as you. The goodbyes with them will be the hard ones, because they remember the old storylines too. Then there are the newer characters. A few are excellent and you wish you'd had more episodes with them. Others joined the show because it had become successful, and don't really know what the show was originally about. You can tell which is which within a couple of conversations.
The second is that you've become the historian. You're the link between the old stories and the new ones, because you were there for both. Newer characters ask you questions and you find yourself explaining context they couldn't possibly have known. The flashback episodes don't get made any more, but you're the one carrying the institutional memory. After the finale, that memory walks out of the building with you.
The third is that the energy in your own performance has waned. Not dramatically. You still hit your marks, still deliver the lines, still come to the readings. But the spark has gone. You're conserving energy for the wrap. Anyone who's watched the show for the full eight seasons can tell.
The script
I'm still immersed in the script, with just a few weeks left to go. The lines feel familiar, and the character arcs are well-defined. My final episode is already penned, and my character's "death" is scripted, marked on the calendar as the inevitable conclusion.
What I notice now, in the way you notice things at the end of a long run, is that my character isn't being written out because the show has nothing more to say. He's being written out because his arc is complete. The series will continue without me, probably under a different premise again, with different characters, telling stories I won't be in. That's fine. It's the right ending.
What happens after I speak my last lines
The thing about being in a long-running TV series is that the cast often don't know what they'll do next. Some go on to other shows, some take time off, some retire entirely. Others try to come back and find the industry has moved on.
I don't know what I'll do after I wrap. I haven't auditioned for the next one. I'm not sure I want to. The honest position is that I want to know what it feels like not to be in a long-running show for a while. Whether I miss the rhythm of it, the cast, the sense of being a character in a story bigger than myself.
June 27th marks the day after my finale airs, and that's the date I'm focused on. There’s no script for that day, only a blank page. Whatever unfolds then won’t be part of the show.
My run, by then, will be in the can. Cast into history.
That’s a wrap.
Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
Tony writes about his personal journey to early retirement at freebefore65.co.uk.*
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