Sweet smell of Succession
Writer Jesse Armstrong moves into big-budget US TV drama with his dark sense of British humour still intact
IF YOU WANTED to find a recurring theme to Jesse Armstrong’s work, you might see it in swearing. The British writer’s work has covered flatmates (Peep Show), universities (Fresh Meat) and politics (The Thick Of It), and as different as they all are, each boasts inventively salty language. His latest effort, Succession, is a slick big-budget ten-part comic drama for HBO, and “certainly the most meatily dramatic show I’ve worked on”, he concedes — but the appetite for creative cursing is still there. Episode 2, for example, is titled ‘Shit Show At The Fuck Factory’.
It’s not an inappropriate creative choice, given the setting. Succession focuses on Murdoch-ian media mogul Logan Roy (an almost King Lear-ian Brian Cox) and his dysfunctional, foul-mouthed progeny, all vying for a slice of the family fortune after he ponders retirement. Armstrong’s research into the world of wealthy families (he wrote an unproduced screenplay on Murdoch) suggested “this world is not antithetical to tough verbal exchanges”, he says.
Such exchanges are on full show when Empire visits the lavish wedding set that will form the centrepiece of the final two episodes. Two handheld cameras track multiple Roy family members trading fast-talking quips on a wedding dance floor; over several takes, we witness the insult, “Screw you!” evolve into, “Why don’t you suck on the tits of a she-wolf?” after on-set rewrites.
In spite of their caustic manner, Armstrong hopes the Roys are not entirely unsympathetic. “They’re all potentially corruptible,” he says. ”Along with the rest of humanity.”
SUCCESSION IS ON SKY ATLANTIC AND NOW TV IN AUGUST