What ‘Succession’ owes to ancient Rome’s depravity
Monday sees the return of Succession, HBO’S critically applauded drama about a toxic media dynasty. It is loved by metropolitan types like me, pored over in countless articles, though I wonder whether that many people in the real world are aware of its existence. My advice is that you watch it – it is streets ahead of anything produced in Britain this year.
Oddly, though, Succession is a very British affair. Its creator, Jesse Armstrong, co-created Channel 4’s great Gen X sitcom Peep Show, and wrote for The Thick of It. Armstrong’s writing team includes Lucy Prebble, the dramatist famed for Enron. Another member, Tony Roche, started his career working on material for blissfully unaware DJ and musician John Shuttleworth. This is instructive, I think. Not just in the blissfully scabrous humour that somehow feels very un-american, but also in the show’s lineage. One series in particular seems influential, whether Armstrong meant it deliberately or not.
I, Claudius, starring Derek Jacobi, first aired on the BBC in 1976 and, based on Robert Graves’s brace of novels about the early days of the Roman Empire, was all the rage at the time, and is still regarded as one of the greatest dramas ever made for British television. A babe in arms when it was first shown, I didn’t come to it until the early 2000s, by which time television as a medium had come on in leaps and bounds. This creaky retro thespathon is likely to test the patience of the modern viewer. It is inherently theatrical, both in its stagy sets, and in its acting, some of which could be charitably described as enthusiastic – although it must be emphasised that the definition of OTT, Brian Blessed, feels remarkably real as Augustus.
But I, Claudius is also utterly gripping – a really thorough and psychologically satisfying exploration of people in power and people lusting for power behaving badly. Despite its longueurs, it hooks you in. There is no moral heart, no life lessons and no one any self-respecting viewer could reasonably identify with.
Watching any episode of Succession often feels as if you have stumbled onto a wobbly Television Centre set from Jack Gold’s production, and I mean that as a compliment. The despicable, compromised behaviour of mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his clan has the same heightened tempo. Perhaps Armstrong offers more chance of redemption, but then gleefully, cruelly, crushes that hope before your very eyes. Wet-behind-the-ears cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is perhaps the closest we get to a viewer interloper, a parochial outsider who is witnessing the craven powerplay of his relatives for the first time. But he is also pretty horrific as a person: spineless, grasping, almost fatally biddable. The series doesn’t have a matriarch of quite such vaulting ambition as Sian Phillips’s Livia Drusilla, though the new season suggests that Logan’s wife Marcia (Hiam Abbess) could be a contender.
Also, the dialogue can be just as fruity. When you hear Logan’s younger son – the impish screw-up Roman (Kieran Culkin) greet his father’s butler, one is transported back to an age of actorly proclamation. “Hail, my fellow toiler man, I have returned from real America, bearing the gift of sight.”
This doesn’t seem so far away from I, Claudius’s many verbal gems. (“I’ve seen how frail is the structure of a civilisation before the onslaught of a gust of really bad breath!” etc).
Incidentally, it has also struck me that family, a crucial component in I, Claudius, is a very good starting point for drama. As Tolstoy famously said: “All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” These words have proved most effective in creating some of the greatest TV dramas, from The Sopranos to Dallas. Succession continues in a similar vein with no one as wretchedly unhappy as the Roys. The fact that they are thoroughly ghastly is enmeshed in their misery.
But there is another similarity between Succession and I, Claudius:
both refuse to talk down to their audience. Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty)
has pinpointed this as a problem with British TV drama. If you are watching the Sunday-night drama Ridley Road, a sort of Janet and John guide to the rise of anti-semitism in early 60s Britain, you will know what he means.
However, I also feel he is partly responsible for what I see as a recent decline in our output. Mercurio’s stuff is undeniably clever, but he doesn’t operate at the same level of psychological brilliance as Armstrong (nor does he have his coruscating wit).
The terminally dumb submarine drama Vigil (made by the team behind Line of Duty) proves that we are in the doldrums intellectually, and that is why the return of Succession feels so welcome. It does not make any concessions to us mere mortals, but still works brilliantly as sheer entertainment. I, Claudius achieved as much 46 years ago, never more so than when John Hurt (as an unhinged Caligula) appeared in gold lamé, as if auditioning for a Soho strip show. Watching this makes me think that British drama needs more risk takers – and definitely needs more gold lamé.
Series 3 of Succession starts on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on Monday