Succession

Like everyone else in the Acela corridor, Cockburn has been avidly watching the final season of Succession. Without giving too much away, there have been some moments this season that are up there with the best of prestige television: the real-time playing out of a medical emergency in the third episode, for example. Cockburn feels entitled, then, to speak up when the show is less than great — and Sunday night's election special was an absolute stinker. One of the best things about Succession is that it feels like it takes place in a realistic parallel universe, very similar to this one, except that Trump and Covid never happened. And the drama is at its weakest when it tries to play solemn about the Roys' political whims.

In April, director Robert Eggers told GQ that “every time period interests me except for the one we’re living in.” The director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman will never make a movie set in modern times: “I get enough of the kitchen sink in my kitchen sink... For whatever reason, it just does not inspire me. And you can’t shoot something that doesn’t inspire you.” That’s a good attitude for a director to have, but it’s alarming how many American filmmakers are either uninterested, unwilling or unable to make work that speaks directly, not only to our present moment, but to our future and its possibilities, however limited and grim. Who can blame anyone for being hopeless now?

At one point in an early Simpsons, Homer comes across an old issue of TV Guide, and finds the listing for the sitcom Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. ‘Gomer upsets Sergeant Carter,’ he reads — adding with a fond chuckle, ‘I’ll never forget that episode.’ Even for British viewers unfamiliar with the show, the joke is clear: that’s what happens in every episode. Sad to say, this popped into my head while watching the first in the new series of Succession. The acting, script and direction are as brilliant as ever.

The most eagerly anticipated television series of 2021 has finally returned. There are no dragons, or homicidal drug lords, or anachronistically liberal Georgian aristocrats in sight. Instead, the protagonists are a bunch of squabbling, backstabbing multi-millionaires so obsessed with obtaining advantage over one another that the casual cruelties they inflict on the 'little people' around them pass unnoticed. Welcome to the third season of Succession, the wittiest, most vicious show in recent memory. There are numerous reasons for its success.