In the last Emmy award ceremony, the series won the best script. In the Golden Globes, Best Actor for Brian Cox and Best Drama. I watched both seasons to give you my take on Succession.
Logan Roy is the patriarch of the family. He runs a media empire, has power and is a friend of the president. He is a man who is hated by progressive sectors, and he is also racist, sexist, cruel, ruthless in business and all those things that are not acceptable today. At eighty years of age, he is sick, soon he will have to choose one of his sons, Connor, Shioban, Kendall and Roman, as his successor in the company, but some of them already have a strategy in place to take control. The power struggle within that family of snakes is about to begin.
Can you hate all the characters in a TV show? The answer is yes. In any other series, there are characters we can identify with. We can hate the villain, love the hero, or vice versa. But in Succession , most will have a feeling of contempt for each of the protagonists.
All the characters in Succession are absolute sons of bitches. They are all vermin, dirty millionaires, ruthless rats, disgusting, it is almost impossible to feel sympathy for any of them. They are the worst human beings that can exist.
But when you start watching the series, it becomes an addiction, it's a trip to a lake full of piranhas, but where we want to take a dip. Even though you hate every one of those damn millionaires, you enjoy seeing how bad they are, watching them stab each other in the back. It feels good to see them suffer. Yeah. It's not that I don't have feelings, it's just that the characters deserve all the misery.
I am absolutely sure that this is one of the factors that influence the success of this series in its two seasons (the third batch of episodes is confirmed and in preparation).
Some episodes and scenes, for brief moments, can bring us emotionally closer to some of the characters, but that emotional bond ends quickly, when something happens where we see again how unpleasant the character is.
A series about rich people? Must be very boring! This could be the expression of anyone who hasn't seen it. But the answer is no. The series Succession has some good punchy dialogue, lots of black humor. It turns out to be a very funny series, for those who like this kind of humor. With situations that will make us laugh bitterly. In the second season, we will witness an absolutely absurd sequence.
When I researched who the creator of the series was, I understood where that delicious black humor came from. The creator is Jesse Armstrong, a British man with a lot of experience in comedies (Peep Show, The Old Guys, The Thick of It, etc) and he was also the co-writer of a film I saw several years ago, called Four Lions, a crazy comedy about terrorism.
Is it inspired by real people? The creator has stated in several interviews, that there may be similarities with multi-million dollar royal families, who run large media corporations, such as the Murdoch, the Sinclair family, who are close to the current president of the United States, the Redstones, the Roberts family, among others. It should be noted that the creator of the series had written the script of a film about the family of the magnate Rupert Murdoch, but that it could never be made, according to some media, due to the pressure of the same millionaire.
Is the creator a communist? I asked myself that question while watching the series. This portrait of a powerful and rich family, where everyone is a character that we come to hate, seems to be the communist message that the rich are evil. I looked on the Internet for information about Jesse Armstrong, and discovered that he worked in his early days for a politician in the British Labour Party, which is the main party representing the left in Britain. Now it all makes sense!
I love the series, I enjoy watching these evil rich people, I accept some of their political satire and their criticism of those powerful families that control the world. But I will not become a leftist. The character of the Democratic senator is portrayed as a great defender of the people, who hate Logan Roy for being an evil Republican who is destroying the world.
Those who selected the cast of the Succession did a great job. Each of the actors transforms perfectly into these characters. The ruthless Logan Roy is played by veteran actor Brian Cox. Jeremy Strong is Kendall Roy. Hiam Abbass is Marcia, Logan Roy's current wife. Sarah Snook is the beautiful Shioban Roy. Kieran Culkin is great at playing Roman Roy. Alan Ruck is Connor Roy. Nicholas Braun is Greg, the poor, half-witted character, but he's also an asshole, like the whole family. Matthew Macfadyen is Tom, who marries Shioban and J. Smith Cameron is Gerri, Logan's loyal employee. The second season has Holly Hunter as a guest actress, playing Rhea Jarrell. There are more characters, you can see who the actors are on IMDB.
Rich people's stories are attractive to viewers. We enjoy seeing on the screens, how millionaires live, the public is morbid, as proof of this, are the reality shows that show the supposed daily life of celebrities and rich people, so the success of the Kardashian programs.
What's so attractive about these shows? It's hard to determine, maybe a psychology expert has the right answers. As a consumer of movies and TV series, I must admit that they are attractive stories, watching the lifestyle of millionaire people. I think it's a way of dreaming of becoming like them, of being part of that small percentage of the world's privileged population.
TV series about the conflicts of millionaire families is not something new, several decades ago they were very popular series. I remember following some of them: Dinasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, The Colbys, Flamingo Road, etc. But in those shows they were closer to a soap opera and had a variety of characters, some were good people and were well accepted by the audience.
When is the third season of Succession opening? They haven't said a release date. But it's already one of my favourites and I'm looking forward to seeing the new episodes. I want to continue watching the betrayals of these rich, disgusting people who are willing to eat each other up.
My Rankin: 4.5/5
