Sublime Succession snarls into its final lap
WE NOW KNOW the real secret to business success. It’s not actuarial skills, understanding a balance sheet or the ability to make a good deal. Oh no. That’s just a waste of time. It’s the ability to sound off at your own children, preferably using the eff word – and in public for maximum impact. I’m sure other expletives would be okay, too.
I give you the swan song of Brian Cox’s inimitable Logan Roy, who runs a fictional global media business in Succession (Sky Atlantic, Monday) but can’t think which “rat” – which is what he calls his children – to leave his multi-billion dollar empire to.
Battersea Dogs Home must be a contender.
What makes it all the more interesting is that you sort of sympathise with him.
While he’s engaging in a takeover bid, he realises that his own kids are spoiling his chances. All the while Logan is railing at everyone else too. Arriving at his own birthday party, he barks: “Munsters! Meet the **** ing Munsters!”
I congratulate writer Jesse Armstrong for once again making international business negotiations the stuff of laughter.
I guffawed happily for the hour and 10 minutes I was glued to the first episode in the final, fourth series of Succession.
Armstrong, a Brit, has a history of writing decent gags, first for Peep Show, and secondly for Fresh Meat.
The show might as well be British; we should claim it from HBO.
One of the other major stars is Spooks’ Matthew Macfadyen who plays one of those PRS (with the greatest respect) who can look in both directions at the same time. His character Tom is married to
Shiv, one of Logan Roy’s four children – each of them, in Logan’s view, competing for a waste-of-space award.
At the end of a rip-roaring episode, estranged Tom and Shiv end up in their own penthouse at the same time. They
attempt a rapprochement, with Tom hilariously suggesting, “I can see if I can make love to you…” Can’t wait for the Relate session.
As the negotiation continues, it’s apparent that the kids are being played.
Logan Roy can’t help himself: “Congratulations on saying the biggest number, you **** ing morons”.
Making the children rubbish at business makes it all the funnier.
At the start, they’re doing a Zoom call on a brilliantly daft business idea, The Hundred.
Yes, I know – that was a cricket tournament here. I can only think Armstrong was a cricket fan and didn’t like the idea of a rock band playing in the break in an innings.
Meanwhile, Great Expectations (BBC One, Sunday) was certainly different but was it better than versions that have come before? In the hands of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, it had many of the elements you would expect, although I was rather shocked to see the opening with dear Pip trying to take his own life. I don’t remember the book starting that way!
But of course, why do an adaptation which isn’t a leap from the original? No one ever pitches a new drama: “I’d like to do a version of Great Expectations as close as possible to the David Lean classic.”
In Knight’s version we see what the characters get up to in their spare time. Sleeping, I imagine. Or what Miss Havisham and Estella were really doing in Satis House? We wouldn’t want to see.
Of course, that’s not what was written in Great Expectations. It’s more, Little Expectations when Pip wakes up in 2023. Knight’s drama just wasn’t dark enough. I expected his Victorian world to be more like his TV drama Taboo, starring Tom Hardy. We had a glimpse of that in episode one when Magwitch attempts to knock seven bells out of his adversary on the prison ship, and then their crowdpleasing mud wrestle.
But the first episode lacked convincing emotion from the main characters, which points to hurried direction. I hope it picks up – because we have so few adaptations of the great Victorian novels.
Blue Lights (BBC One, Tuesday) didn’t come from a literary work, but it had tons of tension. Every sequence in this new police procedural set in Belfast brought me to the edge of my sofa and I mostly stayed there for 60 minutes.
Cops in Belfast have ready access to weapons in the boot of their cars. But it’s also about rookie Grace trying to do a difficult job in a new way.
For a cop show, it has surprising heart – and good potential.