Succession, season 3 episode 1 review: biting and brilliant, this drama deserves far higher ratings
Some shows punch above their weight. Succession cleaned up at the Emmys last year: outstanding drama, best lead actor, best direction, writing and casting. Yet most people have never seen it. Here, where it’s shown on Sky Atlantic, the first series averaged 150,000 viewers. In the US, where it can be found on HBO, the second series concluded with 1.1 million. In ratings terms, it’s a minnow.
But it deserves all those accolades. Simply, it’s terrific. I still marvel at how Jesse Armstrong, the writer who perfectly captured the lives of two losers in a Croydon flat in Peep Show, has also created this show, set in the rarefied world of billionaires, and made it seem equally authentic. The two do have something in common: every line of dialogue is a gem.
Series three of Succession begins directly where series two left off – that is, after Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) sent things nuclear by giving a press conference in which he implicated his father, Logan (Brian Cox), in a series of company scandals, and bid to depose him. Logan gathers his other children and his team around him for a council of war, which mostly takes place aboard a private jet. One of Logan’s gophers, greeting them at departure, asks where the plane should head. “Either New York or Geneva or London or Singapore or LA,” is the answer. This is how the other half live.
That 2020 best actor Emmy went to Strong, and it’s a brilliant performance because it has to embody all the contradictions of Kendall’s character: the ego, the vulnerability, the recklessness and the self-doubt. Kendall is simultaneously exhilarated and terrified by what he’s just done. Will it turn out to be the best or worst decision he’s ever made? And just how much cocaine has he been snorting to fuel his way through this and say things as stupid as (to his new crisis management team): “I think the headline needs to be, ‘F--- the weather, we’re changing the cultural climate’”.
Kendall wants his siblings to jump ship too, but they’re too scared to do that and risk ending up on the losing side. Logan is rattled, but you wouldn’t bet against him – particularly when, as he said at the end, he plans to go “full f---ing beast”. He’s continuing to play his children off against one another. Everyone in the Succession world is a stranger to loyalty – with the possible exception of cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), and that’s only because Greg is too dim to play the game properly.
What makes the show stand apart from, say, Billions – another series about the ruthless mega-rich – is the humour. It is bitingly funny, whether through the idiocy of Greg (“You’re the number one trending topic ahead of Tater Tots, and the Pope followed you! Oh… I don’t think this is the real Pope”) or the caustic wit of Roman (Kieran Culkin). The Bafta committee recently announced that British actors in US dramas will henceforth be eligible for awards, and Matthew Macfadyen as the pompous Tom Wambsgans should win best supporting actor for his facial expressions alone.
Armstrong pays attention to even the most minor players. I have a soft spot for Chief Financial Officer Karl (David Rasche), while eldest sibling Connor (Alan Ruck) gets fun scenes, including the one in which he tried to persuade his girlfriend that they could market her terrible play by republishing all of its worst reviews: “Let’s jump onto the irono-cycle and make it a thing!”
As Shiv, Sarah Snook rarely gets a funny line. She’s the gimlet-eyed daughter who seems to have all the qualities to lead Waystar Royco – smart, hard-hearted – yet Logan passes her over again and again. It’s for viewers to theorise on why that is: is it because she’s a woman? Or is he piling disappointments upon her as some sort of test?
Everyone says Succession is about the Murdochs. “It really isn’t the Murdochs,” Armstrong has said. And surely no family could be as toxic as this. Could they swear as much as this, though? The comedy writer in Armstrong uses language to poke fun at the posturing, as when Logan and Kendall conduct a ferocious conversation over the phone with a secretary as go-between. “I’m gonna grind his f---ing bones to make my bread,” growls Logan. The secretary passes this on. “Ok, well, tell him I’m going to run up the f---ing beanstalk,” says Kendall. It’s absurd, and deliberately so.
The series will run in weekly instalments, which is quite unfashionable these days. I think it lends itself to box set viewing and would recommend waiting a few weeks so you can binge it, because an hour of this isn’t enough.