I love you, but you are not serious people

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2023 

#2 : Succession

Was the final season of Jesse Armstrong’s astonishing dynastic saga its finest from start to finish? Possibly not. But even an eight-out-of-10 performance from this show beats most dramas at their best. Logan Roy’s shock death was one of the year’s most talked-about moments (prompting the Daily Mail to put a bizarre obituary of him on the front page, as if he had been a real person). Really, though, this season was all about the finale. After nine episodes of zinger-packed scheming set up the showdown of the year, it did not disappoint. The terrifying moment Kendall hugged Roman until his stitches popped! The Roy siblings’ cackling about “nobbies”! “I’m the eldest boy!” Ultimately, it bowed out with a revelation that was surprising, depressing and all too realistic – the exact ending this all-time great needed.

I watched all the previous episodes as part of the 2021 year-end list and enjoyed them, so was always going to pick up on the rest of this - it was one of the few things that the lovely Mrs Reed and I watched together "in real time" last year.

And I'm not really sure what point there is in me saying anything about it - you've either already watched this or you're just not going to now.  As The Guardian says, this wasn't its finest season but Succession at not its finest is still pretty damn fine.  It did do an excellent job in introducing Logan Roy's death unexpectedly (yes, this is a spoiler but I think we can safely say it's out there now), although there's an argument that they didn't quite know what to do with things once they'd done so.  But once they'd sorted how they were going to end it, they did an excellent job in wrapping things up such that you didn't know until the very end how it was all going to work out.

The acting is all to the usual high standards - with the usual suspects taking the plaudits.  Brian Cox is the boss man, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Alan Ruck (with more to do here than he's been given in other series) are the kids, Matthew MacFadyen and Nicholas Braun do their amusing double-act, everyone else does their usual thang and Alexander Skarsgard does a fine turn as a tech-bro baddy.

It's filmed in the usual classy and expensive looking style - there are some GORGEOUS looking locations here (that hotel was something else) and they don't stint on the props.  The quality of the writing is also up to its usual high standard (even if the plot isn't always as taut as it could be) - there are some killer lines in every episode.

That's all I have to say really and I don't imagine any of it will make the slightest difference to your life because the chances are you'll have seen it or you've seen/learned enough to know you ain't gonna watch it.  If you've not seen any of this, then I think it's worth at least checking out - but you have to start from the beginning, partly because seasons 1 & 2 are the best ones and partly because a lot of the backstory is required.  If you fancy it, then it's on Sky - but it requires QUITE the investment of time.

#1 - Some damn fine telly
#3 - Another fine send-off