Double trouble as two sizzling series approach the final curtain

Two of the US's most compelling actresses — Kyra Sedgwick of The Closer and Glenn Close of Damages — return this week with new seasons of their hit series.

In The Closer, Sedgwick's deputy police chief Brenda Leigh Johnson has put away many of Los Angeles's most vicious killers. Through razor-sharp cop instincts and cunning interrogation techniques, she often nails her cases by wringing a confession or cornering a suspect through contentious methods.

Despite a rabid fan base, solid ratings and her Golden Globe (2007) and Emmy (2010) wins, Sedgwick, 47 - well into her police procedural's seven-year run - decided to call it a day with this landmark TNT network series after its seventh season.

"We didn't want to hang around too long and start stinking up the joint," Sedgwick told David Letterman earlier this year.

And Sedgwick wanted to return to her East Coast roots with her husband, the actor Kevin Bacon. "I'm very much a New Yorker, although I have really grown to absolutely love Los Angeles. But my family's in New York — and I have a big family."

To wind down The Closer with a sizzling storyline, six episodes were added to the 15 already ordered for Season Seven and it's the first of these final six that will air today.

These last episodes are also designed to launch Major Crimes, a spin-off with Brenda's colleague Captain Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell) as the new head of LAPD's Major Crimes Division.

Tonight's episode, Hostile Witness, finds Brenda confronting her nemesis, Phillip Stroh (Billy Burke), a defence attorney and rapist-turned-serial killer who's always messing with her head.

"I think it would be interesting for Brenda to have a dark ending but it's certainly not going to upset anybody," says Sedgwick. "I think, as these last episodes unfold and she gets farther and farther away, I will miss her more and more. I will."

As Sedgwick heads off to pursue movie roles, the six-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close begins the fifth and final season of her legal thriller, Damages, a glimpse into the cut-throat world of New York City's high-stakes litigation. As the revered and reviled lawyer Patty Hewes, Close lays bare the true nature of power and success as we follow her and her whip-smart, ambitious protégé Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne). Close won two Emmys (2008, 2009) and a Golden Globe (2008) for her ruthless portrayal in this FX and DirecTV series.

In tonight's opener, Patty and Ellen, already on opposite sides of Michael Hewes's (Zachary Booth) custody suit against his mother, face off after a cyber-hacker's revelations about insider trading push an informant over the edge.

"What I'm impressed by is that when KZK [Todd A Kessler, Daniel Zelman and Glenn Kessler, the show's creators and executive producers] pitched this idea to me, they said they wanted to explore what power does to people," says Close, 65. "I think they've pretty much fulfilled that vision.

"If you look at how these characters were in the beginning and how we are at the end, I think they've been marked. They definitely have, in some ways, been damaged. I think [the producers] really stayed close to that exploration. And I take my hat off to them."

The Closer (10pm today) and Damages (11pm Friday) are on OSN First HD