Family troubles
Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote in the second volume of his addictive My Struggle series that there needs to be always more kids than parents in a household. He says this always keeps the family dynamics interesting. This dictum works even better for books and cinema. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, Noah Baumbach’s TheMeyerowitzStories, Jill Soloway’s Transparent are a few examples that are dear to me.
Succession, a new HBO show, milks these socalled dynamics to the hilt and the result is a gripping drama with immaculate scenes. It’s about Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the megalomaniac founder of Waystar Royco, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, and his four grown-up children who aremessed up in their own idiosyncratic ways. The series finds its conflict when the paterfamilias refuses to hand over the reins to his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong), a recovering cocaine addict.
There’s also Shiv (Sarah Snook) who is away from family business but once in a while takes a break from her political lobbyist job to see what’s brewing in her dysfunctional-as-hell family. Kieran Culkin as Roman is the spaced-out son who wants it all from life without breaking a sweat.
Jesse Armstrong, a British comedy writer, creates a compelling family portrait that instantly recalls the famous Tolstoy quote about unhappy families and also the immortal Philip Larkin line about what your mum and dad do to you. The best part of the series are the profane, grotesquely funny one-liners that come thick and fast. The writing is razor-sharp and gives the show the gravitas of Patrick Melrose novels and Aaron Sorkin’s acerbic dialogue.
Sample this: When the chairman of Waystar’s biggest rival lands up unannounced at Kendall’s office, he says, “Pepsi doesn’t just drop in to see Coke.” There are a million such zingers in this utterly captivating series, which aired its finale on August 5. The second season is already in the works.
Profanity oozes from the pores of the show and somehow Armstrong makes it all sound very poetic. For some reason, the gratuitous, obviously unprintable cuss words don’t seem out of place when the members of such a messed-up brood mouth them. Culkin is a revelation when delivering these lines as the nihilistic heir apparent.
There is a bunch of secondary characters who help make this show sound like Game of Thrones for the C-suite. The ninth episode will remind the viewer a lot of GoT’s remorseless and compelling Red Wedding episode. Matthew Macfadyen as the innocent, idiotic Tom and fiancé of Shiv is the narrative device to help give the proceedings some savagely funny levity. Alan Ruck as Connor, the out-of-touch eldest son of Logan, is a shining poster child of trust fund babies. Hiam Abbass as Marcia and Logan’s third wife is a constant presence around her husband and a primary source of discontent to her step-children. Nicholas Braun as the bumbling Greg and a distant cousin of the Roys becomes integral to the show as it progresses. Arian Moayed as Stewy, a cunning venture capital investor, has some of the best lines of the show.
Succession is one of those slow burners that will richly reward those who sit past its first two episodes. The father-son equation between Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong is the show’s beating heart. As headstrong men, they light up the screen whenever they come face-to-face. Both make the show hilariously depressing and that’s a win in my book. All the siblings together on screen are a giant hoot and that’s why the Austerlitz episode was my favourite among the ten.
The similarities with the Rupert Murdoch household cannot be ruled out but that shouldn’t overshadow Armstrong’s intriguing takes on the current media landscape. While Kendall believes TV and newspapers will soon become obsolete, his father insists on buying more local TV channels.
I find it hard to believe that the second season will have an equally delicious wealth of detail but I’m rooting hard for what promises to be one of the most original TV shows to come out of the USA in the past decade.