There are shows I have to watch for my job that make me open my brain with a nail bar.
Posted at 7:15am
Luckily that’s pretty rare because a) after so many years of badly healed lobotomies I’d start looking like Frankenstein’s monster and b) the networks produce a lot less damn bad stuff that makes Perfect Moments or Hotel look like masterpieces.
There are also great shows that make you want to seize the day and let life take its course. Such is the case of Succession, whose fourth season begins Sunday at 9 p.m. on Crave and Super Ecran in French and English.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brian Cox, Obnoxious Father of Succession
It’s probably the most brilliant, cynical, funniest, sickest thing on American television right now. I adore this wealthy, dysfunctional family that tears each other apart to gain control of a media empire, throwing billions on the table like they’re vulgar pennies. You want 8 billion for your business? I’ll give you 10, here!
This fourth season of Succession will be its last (it’s awful, I know) and we feel that the empire of titan Logan Roy is on the brink of collapse after years of spectacular betrayals and vicious dirty tricks.
The first episode, very well put together, picks up a few months after the finale of the third chapter, in which Logan Roy’s three youngest children, namely Shiv, Roman and Kendall, suffered another humiliation thanks to their tyrannical father.
The character of the patriarch Logan Roy, a kind of Rupert Murdoch, who uses the word “fuck” in all conceivable variations, is exceptional. He treats his kids like rats, he betrays his allies to Big Brother celebrities more often than Coco Belliveau, he negotiates with a chainsaw but still hopes his offspring will call him on his birthday. Hello paradoxes.
PHOTO CHARLES SYKES, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sarah Snook, Alan Ruck, Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin star in Succession.
For their part, Connor, Kendall, Shiv and Roman hate their influential father with all their hearts, who has despised them since birth but desperately seeks his approval and respect, which they will never get.
It’s also twisted and that’s the genius of Succession. Fried people, not super competent and emotionally depressed who insult, use and ridicule each other.
It’s both very nonno, especially thanks to the two oafs Tom and cousin Greg now calling themselves the “disgusting brothers”, and very cerebral, especially for the whole “business” aspect of the series.
Succession’s characters talk (at length) about media or investment company takeovers, and it’s not so much the technical details that interest us as the intricate way the transactions take place behind the scenes.
In Succession 4, Shiv, Roman, and Kendall work hand-in-hand to launch The Hundred, a new medium that Kendall describes as a merger of Substack, The New Yorker magazine, and The Economist.
This digital project doesn’t appeal to them so much, and when an opportunity for revenge presents itself, they bare their fangs and aim for their father’s carotid artery.
In the other camp, old man Logan Roy completes the sale of his Waystar empire to billionaire Lukas Matsson, founder of the GoJo platform. 48 hours remain until the contract is signed. Successor fans – we are many! – knowing that this crucial time is always full of last-minute changes and chaotic “hands-free” calls. And that doesn’t change, much to our sadistic delight.
The fourth chapter of Succession also brings the Pierce family back to the fore, who were almost swallowed up by Waystar in season two. Remember. The very conservative Roys spent the weekend with the more liberal Pierces in an unprecedented festival of unease. It was delicious.
Two years later, would matriarch Nan Pierce, still supported by her cousin Naomi (Kendall’s ex-girlfriend), be ready to finally sell her TV station and newspapers to her sworn enemy?
You probably suspect that the couple Tom and Shiv are doing badly. It was Tom who put the final knife in Shiv’s back in the riveting Season 3 finale.
PHOTO CHARLES SYKES, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen play Shiv and Tom.
Around the grumpy Logan we find the usual Gerri, Karl and Frank, but above all Kerry, the assistant who has everything to do and who is the protagonist of the story. She is surprising.
Succession is Shakespeare for the 1% of the 1%.
The dialogue tumbles at breakneck speed, the insults pile up, Connor is pathetic in his never-ending race for the American presidency, and Kendall pours out a torrent of complicated words he doesn’t understand.
There’s always a character wearing a plain beanie and a dark zip-up sweater.
That’s all, successor. And it’s damn good, or @#%$ good for readers allergic to swearing.