If this thing ends up reading like an elegy then good because Rectify has been the most elegiac show on television for its entire run. The show, which ran on the Sundance channel as its first original bit of programming and found its way to New Zealand on Rialto (on Sky TV), wrapped up its fourth and final season a couple of weeks ago in America and it deserves a proper farewell. So here it is.

Rectify tells the tale of Daniel Holden, a convicted killer who’s lived on Death Row for the last couple decades but is released back to his old hometown as DNA evidence casts doubt over his guilt. He’d supposedly done something terrible as a teenager, though while they get into plenty of details and speculation as it goes on, the show is never really about that. Daniel himself doesn’t remember the night clearly and his confusion as to whether or not he really did it causes all sorts of personal turmoil yet around him are family and cohorts who are convinced of his innocence. And some who aren’t.

Regardless. Rectify isn’t a whodunit, it’s a beautiful, haunting yet intensely realistic vision of a man in his mid-30s let loose in a world that he no longer understands, forced to deal with the side glances of others and the futility of his life to date. It’s often too much for a stoic man with a poetic soul such as Holden, the full damage of what he’s endured only fully exposed in the final season.

Around him also unfolds the travails of those who love and care for him, those who think the very opposite, those who are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and those that do not. It’s a small town fable, set in Paulie, Georgia. His father died while he was in prison, his mother remarried thus bringing a step-father, a step-brother and a half-brother into the family. He has a sister too, who is an endlessly fascinating character. All of them are, to some degree. All have had their lives affected by their association with Daniel, which has me thinking that maybe Rectify’s secret weapon is that it takes place after the event, years after in fact. It’s not a show about actions - it’s a show about consequences.

And of course the people who deal with those consequences. The not so secret weapon of Rectify is how fully realised its characters have always been, immaculately acted and brilliantly written. They don’t propel the plot just as the plot doesn’t define them. Everything happens naturally and honestly which is such a rare and beautiful thing.

This is an excerpt from a speech that Daniel makes in the finale, one of the last of so many such bittersweet revelations. Sometimes Rectify can be so on the nose that it feels hallucinatory. It’s got that southern gothic about it. Shades of Flannery and Faulkner, shades of some truth which links us all:

“I've always felt such guilt that others were wasting their lives on me, that I was a waste, that I was unworthy. But last night I didn't feel that guilt, or that I was a waste. I didn't necessarily feel, uh, uh, worthiness, but I did feel a kind of responsibility, I guess. At least a desire to try and not let you all down. And then I felt the smallest flicker of not wanting to let myself down, you know? Because somewhere in all this, I've managed at times to fight for myself for some reason, to fight for my life for some reason.

And I survived for some reason.

And here I am, still, for some reason.

And me not knowing that reason doesn't diminish it or invalidate it or disprove its existence.

And that's what I'm going with today, Mr. Stern.

No promises beyond that.”

Credit to showrunner Ray McKinnon the empathetic genius that he is. The fact that the show was made for a prestige film channel was probably crucial. Most TV is about perpetuating plot and time ticking along whereas Rectify takes place, to paraphrase a line from the show itself, in between the seconds. It takes its time and lets things evolve on their own. The deliberate pace is a little jarring at first simply because there are so few things like it… but eventually it becomes hypnotising.

This fourth and final season ranks up with the best the show ever achieved. To be fair, there wasn’t a weak series amongst them but just when you didn’t think it was possible they ramped up the profundity for the closers. Every one of the final eight episodes was soulful and moving. Every one of them brought tears to the eyes. After so much struggle and search, the fourth season chose not to wrap things up with a grand unveiling or a dramatic twist – even genuine closure was hard to find, but isn’t that just life? You finish one battle and you’re on to the next, there’s never any real closure. If there was a theme of the last few episodes though, it was healing. Choosing to heal, the desire to heal. Embracing the glimmer of hope that shines just bright enough that if you squint your eyes you can make it out in the distance.

I don’t want to spoil anything because the journey is such a stunning thing and I wouldn’t want to ruin a second of it. So plot details and character insights will be kept to a minimum, suffice to say that the wisdom learned/earned on this show is for real. I’m thinking of the wrestling goat man, the party at the oven guy’s shack, the flashbacks with Kerwin, some of the conversations with Tawny, the moments of frustration and anger, the numerous legal tangles, the relationship with Chloe, the books that are read, the songs that are sung… there are so many scenes and speeches that are at once both sacred and mundane, that combination shining a lamplight on so much that we take for granted in the daily living that we do.

Watch it, will you? Allow it to wash over you, to guide you and inform you. Pay attention to the details and to the lessons on offer. Love, laugh, cry and sigh with the people of Paulie and as one person says to another in the finale: ‘I hope your life is full of wonder.’

They all are, if you pay enough attention.