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I have a theory that many great artists’ strength is a product of their weakness. The flaw of the relentlessly frivolous creator of Succession Jesse Armstrong, for example, is that he is very easily bored by grown-up subjects such as big business, finance, corporate structure, legal affairs or anything involving depth and seriousness. Which ought, you might think, to pose a major problem for someone constructing an epic drama — loosely based on the Murdoch family — about the struggle for succession in a global media empire.
But Armstrong’s saving grace is this: most viewers are not interested in such tedium either. The reason, for example, that Elisabeth Murdoch has been seen wearing a “Team Shiv” T-shirt (in homage to the daughter of the Logan Roy dynasty, played by fellow red-headed Australian Sarah Snook) is probably not that she has been blown away by the uncanny accuracy of Succession’s depiction of a modern media family. Rather it’s because, like the rest of us, she loves the fact that it’s all a load of hysterical, escapist nonsense involving ludicrous caricatures you cannot help but adore because they are all so stupidly messed-up and hilariously horrible.
When Logan Roy emerges from a helicopter — the same goes for his offspring — he never ducks
Yes, sure, Succession goes through the motions of pretending it’s about the ins and outs of a gigantic entertainment/media corporation, with endless boardroom scenes, takeover bids and so on. But here we are, four seasons in, still being teased with the MacGuffin question of who is going to inherit Waystar Royco, when realistically the business is so outmoded, so hopelessly run by a bunch of posing amateurs, it should have gone under by the end of season one.
What evidence do we have that even the patriarch, Logan Roy himself (Brian Cox), is capable of running a bath, let alone the world’s biggest media business? We don’t. We just see him swearing and scowling a lot, never suffering fools, bullying his minions (notably in the episode where he forced them to scurry around the room pretending to be squealing piggies) and getting in and out of helicopters with imperious confidence. His aura of business savvy is merely the script team’s — and Cox’s — conjuring trick.
When Roy emerges from a helicopter — the same goes for all his offspring — he never ducks. This is one of the tells of the super-rich (unlike for us mere mortals, choppers are routine transport for them) who never panic that the unfamiliar blade is about to chop their head off. And it’s one of those key details where Succession comes into its own because that’s where its true interests lie: not in how the Roy family made or makes its money but in how it spends it.
That’s why it maintains a team of wealth consultants to explain how it’s done. For example, I learn from a fascinating Telegraph article on the subject, the Roy family would never own overcoats: “The rich don’t wear coats; they go from their cars or their jets to their building — their shoes don’t walk on the ground.”
Essentially, Succession is extended luxe porn. Take the glorious scene in this week’s opening episode (of what is sadly going to be the final season, apparently because Cox has had enough of being Logan), where the siblings hop, by private jet of course, from one exquisitely bijou location (an open-plan mansion whose spaciousness, chic and magical view they don’t even notice) to another, the Tuscan-style Californian estate of the rival Pierce family.
The impeccably liberal Pierces look as if they have emerged from a Calvin Klein advert, in tasteful, understated, neutral linen, leather and cashmere and an aura of elegant boredom. Business, let alone numbers, are far too vulgar for them to discuss. But they might just briefly if only the Pierce matriarch Nan (Cherry Jones) can get over the tactical headache that has peskily appeared just as the Roy children have arrived for these frightful and unwelcome negotiations as to whether or not the Pierces get a mere $6 billion for their business or maybe a more tolerable $10 billion.
By the end of the negotiations, the children have talked themselves into paying way over the odds for an ageing media concern whose twentieth-century business model will surely make it unviable. At no stage — as probably the only brains in the family, Roman (Kieran Culkin), points out — have they made the slightest attempt to gauge what it’s actually worth. They just did it to annoy Dad.
Could a super-rich family really remain super-rich this long if they acted so petulantly and ineptly? I doubt it, but then I’m not here for the business storylines, I’m here for the exotic locations, the bizarre set pieces — such as the party at Eastnor Castle that leads to Kendall (Jeremy Strong) inadvertently drowning his would-be drugs supplier — the endlessly inventive one-liners and, above all, any scene involving either Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) or Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) or preferably both.
That’s why the high point for me, in an OK first episode, wasn’t the rival-negotiation main plot. It was Greg trying to pick the appropriate moment to apologize to the irascible and distracted Logan for having had impromptu sex in his home with a suspect woman, who has an inappropriately oversized bag, after having been informed by Tom that they would have been caught on video camera so he might as well fess up now rather than later. You can tell that these are the bits Armstrong most enjoys too. And I love him for it.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
