Six Feet Under.

The last Six Feet Under. Ever. We saved it as long as we could. But we've watched it now, so it's really the end. Five seasons, sixty-three episodes. I don't think there was a single episode where the quality dropped. BLISS called it 'perfect', and even the very end of the last episode tied up all those loose ends she hates. We've watched two series arising from the (I think) 2010 Booker Prize shortlist. Six Feet Under came from 'Skippy Dies', in which, before he dies (about halfway through – look, it's hardly a plot spoiler, given the title of the book) Skippy asserts that Six Feet Under is the best television series ever made. There's a lot of critics who agree. 'The Slap' was broadcast as a short series, it wasn't bad, either. We need something to take the place of SFU, as it was the only thing on television we could both stand to watch at the same time. As a replacement I can't see past 'The Sopranos' or 'Treme'. Of the two, I prefer the New Orleans-set 'Treme', where the city itself is one of the stars, with its love of music and food.

The 6' Under idea, a dysfunctional family running an undertakers, seems to have little promise, but bookended by the two Nate's deaths (father and son, first and third- or fourth-last episodes) there's so much going on that there's never a dull moment. The writers and directors were not afraid to broach taboos, throw in dream and fantasy sequences, or have the dead sit up and have their say. I thought it was like a television equivalent of the dense, tightly-packed prose writers like Iain Sinclair produce, more ideas and information on one page than many manage in twenty or thirty. It's something we may have produced in times when there was a market for, and the will to produce darker, edgier, braver television here, when Denis Potter plays were filmed and broadcast. There's nothing like it been made here for years, with the TV companies focused on karaoke, The Vicar's Fools, Horses and Family, period costume dramas, and endless quiz and panel shows, none of which rival Shooting Stars, which they've ditched.

Last year's Booker shortlist would make good watching:

• The Sense of an Ending would be a good six part series.
• The Sisters Brothers would make a good 'No Country for Old Men' type film, fast-paced and with great dialogue.
• Pigeon English, written almost as a Damilola Taylor docu-drama.
• Snow Drops would make another film, lovingly photographed in Moscow.
• Half Blood Blues, another six-part series, with those brown, grey and sepia wartime colours in Berlin and Paris, and plenty of jazz.
• The only one I think might be difficult to get a screenplay from would be Jamragh's Menagerie. What with the cannibalism and long days in boats drifting and so on.

Just what we need.

West Ham are through to the play off final. Just what we need (if they go on to win), another London derby.