Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.
Succession, on HBO, is good — very good. Part dark comedy, part high drama, Succession’s story takes place in the very present day. Billionaire paterfamilias Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is a father of four, and head of Waystar Royco, a conservative media conglomerate — but the family holdings also include amusement parks, cruise lines and more. Logan is in the running to be the actual Worst Man in the World — there’s a dinner party scene inspired by true stories of Mussolini — and Logan is plausibly Hitler-level bad, as (convincingly) argued by his own brother, Ewan (James Cromwell). Logan is an on-the-nose Rupert Murdoch-like figure: foreign-born, self-made, a billionaire. But his health is fading, and now his children are competing for control of Waystar and, really, the world.
Fancy premise, right? Succession looks fancy, too: It’s about extremely wealthy white people, after all. (“It’s just numbers,” says son Kendall, played by Jeremy Strong, of tens of millions of dollars.) A lot of the action takes place in the beige environs the very, very wealthy build around themselves. You’ve seen them: the bland, flat, ecru and eggshell tones — oppressive, wishy-washy aesthetics used as stand-ins for qualities like “sophistication” and “elegance.” At a glance, and based on the overall premise, you might suppose Succession is an erudite or excessively weighty show, but don’t worry. Very often, it’s very stupid, and almost unbearably funny.
The comedy in Succession is fairly “British” in its execution, and for my money, it’s the most successful translation of British humor to an American show I’ve ever seen. (Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is also co-creator of much-beloved British sitcom Peep Show.) There are two primary kinds of British humor Succession excels at. There’s the excruciatingly close look at buffoons and how they humiliate themselves: cringe comedy at its very best, made even better by impeccable acting, delivery, timing and editing.
And then there’s the gutter! Another important facet of British humor is puerility — think broad-strokes toilet humor beloved by particularly immature 15-year-old boys, in other words. Example time! When Waystar exec Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) “swallowed his own load” after getting sucked off (at his bachelor party) and having it spit back into his mouth, Tom is, indeed, happy about this. Because it was a “closed loop system,” he doesn’t think he technically cheated on Siobhan, Logan’s only daughter.
But don’t feel sorry for Siobhan (“Shiv,” to her friends and family), because she’s a monster. Every character is, in fact, a monster! Turns out money has a tendency to do that to humans. Shiv is arguably the smartest of the kids, and utterly convinced she’s the smartest person in the world. Husband Tom is a masculine “meat puppet” for her to work through — she’s a consummate user. Eldest son Connor (Alan Ruck) is an honest-to-God fascist currently using family money to run for president. Logan had the audacity to name his third son Romulus (Kieran Culkin), and “Roman” is immature and constantly inappropriate. Like all the Roy children, Roman suffered casual abuse and is terrified of his father.
But Kendall — whoo boy, Kendall. Second-eldest son and arguably the most broken, the scandals he suffers as American Royalty are more akin to the Kennedys than their conservative counterparts: serious addiction issues, Chappaquiddick-like accidents. Kendall vacillates most easily between the comic and dramatic elements of the show. He’s a 40-something man, and utterly pathetic in his need to be loved by his father — again, let me remind you, basically the Worst Man on Earth. “If dad didn’t need me right now, I don’t exactly know what I would be for.” By the way, Kendall is a father, too. But why spend time with your own family when you canpen a rap about how you “stan dad” and perform it in front of hundreds of embarrassed sycophants?
Kendall also lets his guard down a bit around brother-in-law Tom, and Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), who will sometimes answer to Craig, if that’s what Logan calls him. Tom and Greg are high-level comic relief, and share some of the best scenes on the show. Cousin Greg, thanks to Grandpa Ewan, is set to inherit a quarter of a billion dollars, but is willing to give it all up. For what? More.
So who should inherit Waystar Royco? The correct answer is “no one,” because an entity Waystar Royco should not exist in the first place. But Succession excels in part because it’s actually an interesting question — which idiot failson (or daughter) should lead the world’s largest Nazi-promoting, climate-change-denying propaganda network into the 21st century? It’s surprisingly easy to put yourself in anyone’s shoes, a testament to the actors. It’s hard not to pity even Logan from time to time, when Brian Cox plays him as the elderly man he is, whose memory is fading away in real time, and surrounded mostly by family who are getting tired of waiting for him to die. Hilarious stuff!
