Two seasons and 20 episodes later, HBO’s Succession is back to asking the same question—who will succeed Logan Roy, the omnipresent patriarch of the Roy family who owns the multi-billion dollar company Waystar Royco? It’s a complicated question given that the ageing Roy has four children (Connor, Kendall, Roman and Siobhan), a son-in-law, a distant nephew and company executives eyeing for position as the head of the empire. Logan, a self-made billionaire who fled Scotland, has made America his home.
He runs a tight ship at Waystar Royco, has deep political ties and trusts no one when it comes to business decisions. With his ailing health, his shareholders need a successor and his children seem to be running out of patience to win the ‘next heir’ war. Sibling squabbles, dysfunctional family, open relationships, drugs, drunk driving fatalities, deceit, mergers, failed acquisitions, corporate cover-ups of harassment—the show will give you a dose of all the rich-and-famous lifestyle clichés albeit with a twist.
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The siblings fight but also look out for each other, the hit-and-run accident is used as blackmail tactic, a family member agrees to an open relationship in return for a higher position at the company—and all of it makes sense because anything is possible when you could be the inheritor of heaps of money. The show also depicts how Logan deliberately pits his children against each other.
The siblings, constantly seeking their father’s approval, distrust each other and are disinterested in things that are not related to their family business. The power of wealth brings out ugliness in the most intimate of relationships. Interestingly, the show faintly resembles the lives of Indian business families and one can’t help but wonder how skewed rich family dynamics could possibly be. Are their children all fighting amongst each other to replace their father? Are their public personas all cover-ups? The show at times feels like an episode out of reality television, given the bizarre plot which serves a vehicle for emotion. Another similar show Billions, on the other hand, delves into financial details and focuses on the micro, while Succession’s focal point is the macro—the high-level manoeuvrings and the amped-up family fights. The show succeeds in creating a very accurate template of how illustrious families function and is absolutely unmissable.
| Succession: Season 1 & 2 Platform: Hotstar Created by: Jesse Armstrong Cast: Hiam Abbass, Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Nicholas Braun Genre: Black Comedy |