As prices increase from exorbitant to eye-watering while our wages stay stagnant,and while the idea that humans can own property seems an increasingly cruel joke to anybody below 40,one place provides brutal,yet effective,solace –Succession.
J. Smith-Cameron as Gerri (centre) and Brian Cox as Logan (right) in Succession.HBO/ Binge
So why is the whitest show on television that’s not on Sky News – but also requires paying Rupert Murdoch to watch – such a source of comfort? Because it argues that the rich are no happier than the rest of us. In fact,the billionaire Roys seem to be even more miserable than Eeyore,or James Packer.
Despite Kendall boasting that he has “the best grief guy” after his father’s sudden death,to which Roman claims to have “pre-grieved”,all the characters are in desperate need of something money can in fact buy:psychotherapy. Even more elusively,they need hugs.
Logan Roy was unhappy to the end,and raised his children on such a vicious regimen of cruelty punctuated by tightly rationed affection that they both despised him and desperately needed his approval. Now,they can never get it.
Instead,they try to match his cunning brilliance,but are doomed to fail;having somehow inherited only Logan’s cruelty and not his ability to win. They want to be as domineering as their patriarch,who had so little regard for his own family that none of them can deliver uniformly positive remembrances at his funeral. But the Roy children are like failed dictators or reality TV producers – committed to dark purposes,yet too incompetent to achieve them.
It isn’t the cheeriest show,despite containing some of the best one-liners in television history — Cousin Greg’s description of Logan stalking through his own television newsroom as “walking around,but with the slight sense that he might kill someone. It’s likeJaws,if everyone inJaws worked for Jaws” is a personal favourite. It’s a painful experience that makes you feel better at the end – like acupuncture that works.
That’s becauseSuccession is a powerful counterargument to the American Dream — the fairytale that anybody can triumph with enough hard work. It’s a modernKing Lear,whose title character is the only challenge to Logan in the “worst fictional father” sweepstakes. Instead,as Gloucester says in the play,“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;they kill us for their sport”.
There are no gods inSuccession,just billionaire failsons who anoint a president based on their narrow financial interests. It’s not flies whose wings are ripped off – American democracy is dismembered in episode eight,which eerily echoed the behind-the-scenes from the Fox News-Dominion Voting trial.
The Roy’s callousness often comes with a body count,whether it’s those overboard on their cruises,or the hapless waiter who made the mistake of trying to help Kendall score — a story that may well return in the series finale,incidentally.
Succession is fuel for cynicism,and perhaps even the nihilism that Logan himself expressed shortly before he died. Uber-rich people really do run everything,they are utterly indifferent to the rest of us,and rarely face meaningful consequences. But their self-serving victories never make our overlords happy – instead,they want to buy more,or perhaps snap up Twitter for lols.
The world ofSuccession is cruel,capricious and unprincipled — but no dystopia. Instead,chillingly yet somehow comfortingly,it’s world that works exactly as ours does. Watching the show both highlights the deep flaws in our society and provides the reassurance that somebody in the writers’ room truly understands them.
In theSuccession podcast,the actor who plays Kendall Roy,Jeremy Strong,described his searingly honest eulogy for Logan as his “Dracarys moment”,citingGame of Thrones command for Daenerys’ dragons to incinerate whatever’s in front of them. He’s right in that it’s a moment of great personal victory — but also that,in the end,everything will burn.
Funereal scenes in Succession,episode nine.HBO/Binge
I trust thatSuccession’s finale will be more successful and satisfying than its HBO stablemate’s. Jesse Armstrong and his team have produced a series of incredible creative consistency;they’re likely to stick the landing in a series that has featured so many helicopters and private jets.
But in any case,they’ve achieved the rarest of things – a series that is both agonising and an utter joy to watch.Succession will certainly be mourned far less ambiguously than Logan Roy.
Dom Knight is a writer,broadcaster and co-host of the Chaser Report podcast.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge,champion and inform your own..