Five stars for new season of Succession
Is Daddy’s Girl Siobhan (Sarah Snook) the peacekeeper she sometimes poses as, or is Shiv – more perfectly nicknamed after a homemade weapon than ever – power-hungry enough to be manipulating everyone? At one point Logan calls her, and the contact photo that pops up on her phone is of Saddam Hussein.
Who, if anyone, will go to prison to make amends as the company’s sacrificial – lamb is too innocent – so sacrificial goat. Shiv’s endlessly passive-aggressive husband, Tom, is pre-emptively scouting prime prison locations, just in case. Matthew Macfadyen carries much of the series’ gallows humour, and makes Tom slightly slimier than ever.
Most importantly, will Logan outsmart them all yet again? Cox can do more with a glance and a raised eyebrow than most actors can do with a monologue. His performance is a wonder, making Logan a great, lion-in-winter enigma. When he asks Kendall, “You OK, son?” the line has never been so chilling. It is true of Succession, as of most dramas about the wealthy, that we are lured in with a combination of aspiration and schadenfreude. Of course we’d want the Roys’ billions. The season plays out mostly in New York, although they may take the occasional jaunt to a meeting on a private island, as one does. But thank goodness we’re not part of that family.
There is more beneath the surface, though, adding another reason the instalments hold up to repeated viewings so well. Succession is an exploration of a rapidly-changing world. Logan’s legacy technology of cable television, including his powerful Fox News-like channel, is competing with his children’s new tech plans for apps and streaming content. The Roys, sometimes subtly and at times pointedly, embody a global economy running away from them. Trying to persuade his siblings to betray their father and embrace his vision for the future, Kendall says, “We’re at the end of a long American century. Our company is a declining empire inside a declining empire.” That may not express his deepest motives, but it captures the provocative, thoughtful underpinning of Succession.
The series doesn’t entirely get away with ignoring recent world changes. The previous seasons’ US president, a Trumpian ally of Logan’s, is still in power, a jarring note today. But the Roys’ alliances provide one of the funniest scenes, when they attend a right-wing political conference attended by many goofy, outlandish and occasionally dangerous activists and candidates. That leads to a mordant possibility. Just maybe, Connor Roy could become president. Stranger things have happened.
★★★★★
Succession premieres on 17 October on HBO and HBO Max in the US, and 18 October on Sky Atlantic/Now in the UK.
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