I had no desire to see this show until I heard NPR’s Linda Holmes raving about it on Pop Culture Happy Hour and at an author event I attended. So, when I was bored this weekend, I decided to give it a try. The first thing I noticed was that the show was created by Jesse Armstrong, the British TV writer who co-created Peep Show, and also wrote for the brilliant The Thick of It (and later it's American cousin, Veep). And boy can you tell, because this show delivers a withering one-liner with British aplomb. It is caustic, brash, and inventive with the invective.
Second thing I noticed? The cast. Brian Cox plays Logan Roy, the patriarch and emperor of Waystar Royco, a multimedia conglomerate that owns everything from television and newspapers to cruise lines and amusement parks. Under him is his second son and heir apparent, Kendall, played by Jeremy Strong, a man whose face you recognize from many things but who is now getting to flex all his creative muscle in a role that is brutal and brilliant. There’s also Kieran Culkin, playing Roman, the youngest son who is a bit of a screw-up, as all youngest sons are wont to be, but also gets to be COO of the company and harbors ambitions to be the man in charge, because yay nepotism. Logan’s only daughter is Siobhan, aka ‘Shiv,’ and she is as dangerous as her nickname would suggest. Played with icy, calculated mastery by Sarah Snook, she is a scheming political consultant who knows how to play every angle and seems to be the only one of her father’s children who has his true ruthless panache. She is engaged to Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), who might be the biggest revelation to me in this cast. I only knew him as Mr. Darcy but in this show, he plays a seemingly affable and eager-to-please outsider who cannot believe his luck about making it into the inner circle of this vicious family. But don’t be fooled - that dopey veneer hides ice-cold ambition and a love of riches that cannot be held in check. There’s a reason he and Shiv are a power couple. And then, Alan Ruck plays Connor, Logan’s firstborn who has rejected the family business and lives out on a ranch in New Mexico. He is free to indulge his whims but has his odd opinions and will take sides in family warfare and poke at the bear, generally proving that he’s a Roy just as much as anyone else. If you’re wondering where you’ve seen him before, he was Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He is all grown up after crashing that Ferrari but still has daddy issues. And last but not least, there's Cousin Greg, played by the marvelously hapless and gawky Nicholas Braun. Initially estranged from the family, he is down on his luck and trying to worm his way back into their good graces, and hoo boy, he gets a rapid education in what it means to be a Roy.
That last paragraph tells you everything you need to know about what makes this show so compelling - it’s all about the character development and the specificity with which each of these horrible people are horrible in their own special way. There is genuinely no one to root for on this show. Kendall is the closest thing we have to the antihero, but frankly, ‘poor little rich boy’ can’t cut it in this day and age. While much of the plot revolves around corporate takeovers and private equity and legalese that makes me snooze, these characters say and do things that make me hit Play Next Episode with startling eagerness. The final episode of Season 1 had a very melodramatic twist, one that has happened in many shows before and you could see it coming from a mile away. But while most shows would have ended on that twist as the cliffhanger, this show gave us the aftermath: how did the character behave after this dramatic event, and how did this ultimately impact the corporate shenanigans. THAT was the cliffhanger - the company’s future, not the human toll of the event that preceded it. And that’s what makes this show so frustratingly fun to watch. It is the epitome of our current culture of capitalist greed. These people are all staggeringly wealthy but despite living in penthouses and eating lobster nonstop, it never matters. Every day is a struggle to make the next deal, defeat the next rival, and engage in ballistic fights with family members over who should lead the company.
Succession is the show for our current times. Evisceratingly funny and well-written, well-acted with a singularly perfect cast, bleak and unrelenting. It shouldn’t be this fun to watch, but I swear it is. My favorite bit is the fact that Logan Roy, who is a Rupert Murdoch-esque figure and arguably one of the worst men ever portrayed on TV, has a go-to response to everything and everyone, which is "Fuck off." Sometime this is said in genuine anger, but oftentimes, it’s merely uttered as a farewell; it's his version of telling someone that the conversation is over, you're dismissed. And that’s what Jesse Armstrong has captured in a nutshell. A world where people treat each other contemptibly and can’t even say goodbye without being unforgivably rude. I often wish I could tell the people in my life to fuck off on a daily basis. I don’t because I’m a polite brown woman. But when I watch Succession, I can dream.
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