History Cliffhanger / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/SeventhHeaven'': A few season finales have ended on cliffhangers, with the 7th season being the worst offender. [[spoiler: Is Lucy pregnant? What happened that brought the head of the church and the police force to the Camdens' front door to talk to Eric immediately? Who did Mary elope with? Did Roxanne and Chandler get married?]] Of course, it was all resolved next season. [[spoiler: Lucy wasn't pregnant, Simon got into a car accident that resulted in a young boy's death, Mary eloped with Carlos, and Roxanne and Chandler break up. Although we never did find out what happened to [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold Christine]] or why [[BrotherChuck Cecilia]] disappeared in early season 9…]]
* ''Series/TwentyFour'': Typically uses a cliffhanger at the end of each ''episode''. The show also featured a season-ending cliffhanger in the final seconds of season 2, which, irritatingly enough, was subverted when the third season picked up three years later and the cliffhanger had already been resolved. This was later revisited in The Game, but it's annoying how the Season 2 and 7 plot arcs aren't fully explored at the end.
* ''Series/{{The 100}}'' likes to end each season by suddenly introducing the BigBad for the ''next'' season, in a way that blows open the doors on what we thought could exist in the show's world.

* ''Series/InTheHeatOfTheNight'': The second season finale "Missing" ended on a cliffhanger with acting chief Tom Dugan murdered by white supremacists and Chief Gillespie still being held hostage by the same white supremacists, with the story being resolved in the third season episode "Anniversary." Unusually, "Anniversary" was not the first episode shown in the third season, as Carroll O'Connor wanted the season opener to be the episode "Rape" in which Althea Tibbs was raped by a co-worker. "Anniversay" was the sixth episode of the season, with the FramingDevice being that Gillespie was explaining to a government agent the circumstances of his kidnapping and how it was resolved.

!!General Examples:
* There seems to be an unspoken mandate these days at Creator/{{CBS}}, that their dramas set up a massive cliffhanger at the end of one season, to be resolved at the beginning of the next. Only shows that are in danger of cancellation (such as ''Series/BlueBloods'', which has yet to pull a season-ending cliffhanger, and the later seasons of ''Series/{{CSI NY}}'') seem to be exempt from this silent directive.
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* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': Ended almost all of it seasons with a cliffhanger, the most famous one being the season 4 finale, where Ross says the wrong name at his wedding.

* ''Series/BrooklynNineNine'' typically ends each season with one.

* ''{{Series/Tyrant}}'': The series ends on one due to its cancellation. [[spoiler: Emma was murdered. Barry has become the tyrant of the title. He and his wife Molly vow vengeance against the Caliphate. A war is coming against them.]]
* ''Series/{{V 2009}}'': Ends with [[spoiler: Diane murdering her mother, and her adopted child being able to give Humans Bliss.]]

* ''Series/{{Primeval}}'': The third series ended with [[spoiler: Danny trapped in the Pliocene, Connor and Abby trapped in the Cretaceous, and Sarah coming up with an unknown idea to sort things out.]] And then ITV announced there wouldn't be a fourth series. There is talk of a movie, however.
** It's been renewed for a fourth and fifth season, so looks like Connor and Abby will finally get out of that tree.

* ''Cliffhangers'': An ill-fated attempt by NBC – in 1979, at a time when the network could not afford any failures – to popularize the concept of old-time movie serials into a weekly televisions series format. Three stories were featured each week, with each segment lasting about 15-20 minutes before reaching a "cliffhanger"-type conclusion and enticing the viewer to "stay tuned next week". This short lived '70s series was a homage to the old movie cliffhanger serials. The segments were as follows:

* ''The Colbys'': The [[SeasonFinale Season 2 finale]] (and SeriesFinale) had several cliffhangers, most of which were later resolved on parent show ''Series/Dynasty1981'', the most fantastic being Fallon's [[spoiler:abduction by aliens in the California desert]].

*** Almost all of William Hartnell's stories were presented with a cliffhanger right at the end, except for season finales and one or two other exceptions, to create the impression of a single run-on adventure. This makes life notoriously awkward for ExpandedUniverse writers trying to find {{Time Skip}}s to put stories in — Peter Purves once joked that there is "one scene change in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters "The Gunfighters"]]" that holds virtually all of his Steven & Dodo audios. (Of course, at the time, there was no concern about this sort of thing.) Most Troughton stories did not do this and there is a lot more room to add material into his timeline. The practice was briefly revisited by the show in Season 12 as part of a RevisitingTheRoots approach with the new Doctor, causing similar problems fitting in adventures with the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry. There were also a small number of later examples, notably Nyssa collapsing at the end of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E2FourToDoomsday "Four to Doomsday"]], which leads into [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E3Kinda "Kinda"]], and the ending of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E3Frontios "Frontios"]] with the TARDIS going out of control, which turns out to be due to it being accidentally caught in the Dalek time tunnel that features in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E4ResurrectionOfTheDaleks "Resurrection of the Daleks"]].

* ''Series/GrangeHill'': Many episodes end with a cliffhanger.

* ''Series/DarkAngel'': ended with a huge CliffHanger. The world just got aware of the Transgenics, who were claiming their own part of the town and got under siege by the police.
** May be considered an unplanned BolivianArmyEnding.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': Peril 'hanger: At the end of Season Three, [[spoiler:Angel is put in a box and sunk to the bottom of the ocean and Cordelia [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence becomes a higher being and disappears]].]] Huge cliffhanger.

* ''Callan'': An early British example was this TV spy series, whose second season ended with an episode where Callan was kidnapped and brainwashed into believing that Hunter, the head of his section, was an enemy agent. Callan kills Hunter and is himself shot; the episode and season ended with him mortally wounded and gasping to Meres, a fellow agent, "Toby, old man... I've been had!" The next season dealt with Callan's recovery and return to operations while being treated with ''extreme'' caution by his superiors.

** Season 6 ended with the lead characters apparently murdered by their [[FutureMeScaresMe evil future selves]]; the audience had to wait three years to find out how they got out of it.
** Season 8 ended with the Red Dwarf being devoured by a genetically enhanced virus while most of the crew evacuates, and the main characters escape to a mirror universe. Except for Rimmer, apparently trapped on the disintegrating ship. The series ends with the screen saying "The End? The smeg it is!". This time the audience had to wait a full decade. [[spoiler:And strictly speaking we still don't know what happened next, because the makers invoked an UnInstallment and skipped forward to where everything was back to normal.]]

* ''The Colbys'': The [[SeasonFinale Season 2 finale]] (and SeriesFinale) had several cliffhangers, most of which were later resolved on parent show ''Series/{{Dynasty}}'', the most fantastic being Fallon's [[spoiler:abduction by aliens in the California desert]].

* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'': Series 3: [[spoiler: Moriarty's face is broadcast on every TV in the UK. "Miss me?"]]

** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': "The Impossible Box" ends with Elnor's and Hugh's back facing the camera, and they're armed with a tan qalanq and a disruptor, respectively. They hear the voices of approaching Romulan guards while the door to the queencell closes behind them, which blocks the audience's view. The scene cuts to black, and the final line of dialogue is: