Almost every character in every scene has no idea what’s going on … and the viewer knows even less. It’s awkward, arrogant – and reeks of desperation

There are cliffhangers – and then there is the end of the first season of The Old Man. After hours of car chases, gun fights and unlikely fisticuffs as the ex-CIA op Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) attempted to evade capture by the US authorities, having been in hiding since returning from Afghanistan in the late 80s, we arrived back in Afghanistan in the present day. There, his daughter, an FBI agent called Emily (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat), whose career depends on concealing her real identity from her beloved boss Harold Harper (John Lithgow), had been abducted by the rebel leader Faraz Hamzad. Why? Because she is actually his daughter, Parwana. Dazed and unaware of her true parentage, she exited a car near Hamzad’s compound. And: finis.

There is an arrogance and an insecurity to the end-of-season cliffhanger. It presumes another instalment is on the cards – and that viewers will wait (maybe years) for the big reveal – but it reeks of desperation: a sense that the only thing keeping people watching is the promise of answers (in this case, what Hamzad is planning to do with Emily and how she will react to news of her father’s identity).