HBO Max show Succession recap, and how British humour seeped into the winner of 13 Emmys, 5 Golden Globe Awards and 1 Grammy

Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in 'Succession' is also the symptom of an age where elusive genius and toxic man-child seamlessly coalesce into an idea that we can hype, worship, obsess about and deride in the same breath. (Screen grab)

Merely days before the premiere of the last season of Succession, Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul whose empire has allegedly inspired the show, announced an unlikely fifth marriage to 66-year-old Ann Lesley Smith. “I dreaded falling in love - but I knew this would be my last,” Murdoch seems to have said, un-ironically in a slice from real life that could so easily annexe one of the many provocations that Succession feeds on. At which point, you have to wonder which one’s better, the HBO series or the real-world histrionics of the world’s elite, tripping over themselves to embarrassing effect. Ahead of its final season, Succession’s global popularity underlines an inflection point for satire, as a globalised cultural lens, to interpret a world that more often than not, doesn’t make sense.

Succession returns for a final season to tell us what happens to Roy estate, to answer the question, once and for all, who will take over. The third season ended with a punch and a cliff-hanger, with the three sparring children (Kendall, Roman and Shiv), united against their remorseless father (Logan) who has decides to cut them off. The chief provocation of that climactic last episode, however, was the deceitful rise and betrayal of Tom (Shiv’s husband). Will Logan acquire the global tech company he has been eyeing to put his foot to the competition’s throat? What tricks will the three siblings turn to in response? Who will fold? And what will become of Tom’s and Shiv’s relationship after that obvious late shove off of a cliff. More than the details of the plot, however, it’s the nature, tone and tenacity of delivery that Succession tempts with. Not the what, but the how, in what is symbolic of the show’s ear-splitting writing, sharp, at times unforgiving category of dark humour.

The origins of this phenomenon of modern satire lie in eccentric British humour. Though satire is a quizzically unique kernel of British comedy, it has, with Succession, well and truly gone global. These roots can be traced back to a handful of British writers, who have since the early 2000s, wielded the flag of an impish form of brutal comedy, all by themselves. Though British satire bloomed in the '60s, giving us iconic collaborations like Monty Python, it never quite travelled across the world until it wore the uniform of the sitcom. In terms of Succession’s popularity at least, that scorching wit can be traced back to The Thick of It, a modest British satire about the kamikaze inner workings of the British government.

Created by Scottish writer Armando Iannucci, The Thick of It exacted the kind of unflattering image of bureaucracy that has since, symptomatically at least, proven itself. Maybe the people running our lives aren’t that smart, the series proposed. Iannucci then adapted the series to a feature length film with In the Loop (2009), the first political satire to be nominated for an Oscars category (Adapted Screenplay). In 2012, Iannucci created HBO’s Veep, led by the terrific Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the vice-president of a crumbling, resentful office space that looks perennially wrecked or on the verge of collapsing. Dreyfus’ portrayal, her capacity for self-deprecation perfectly fits the ungainly cabal that doesn’t so much as run an office as run it into the ground. It’s a vicious, verbally poisonous hoot, so to speak. In 2017, Iannucci went where even most satirists, despite the wherewithal of creative stubbornness, wouldn’t go and made the widely acclaimed satirical film on Joseph Stalin – The Death of Stalin.

None of Iannucci’s creations crossed lines with the kind of franchise fanfare that Succession has witnessed. There is a thread connecting the show to him – Succession’s creator Jesse Armstrong wrote for The Thick of It under his tutelage – but there is possibly more to the phenomenon. Part of the reason why the show has become so popular is because it has emerged at a time of bizarre, ludicrous visibility of the socio-political celebrity. This is an age where tabloid journalism perforates into the vines of everyday conversation, with stunning regularity. Normalcy simply doesn’t have as many takers as compared to the sight of the privileged, the well-heeled or the powerful doing silly, yet remarkable things. The Trump years, you could argue, have smudged the perception of dysfunctionality as an identifier of ineptitude. Murphy’s law, as we know it, has gone from symbolising bureaucratic failure to signalling giddy soldiering. The chaos is the content. It probably explains why everyone in Succession, despite their suits and jet planes, is so bad at their jobs.

There is obviously no dearth of inspiration for the show and yet, it has taken decades for satire to well and truly go global. A part of it is obviously down to Succession’s acerbic, but bolt-per-word writing that knows how to utilise the high-decibel pitch it operates at. Succession doesn’t just curse, but lyrically arrives at its expletives, as if to establish a lingua franca for a vastly corporatized world. The show works universally because inequality, drilled by corporate attitudes, has seeped into the socio-cultural soil of countries, near and far from the site of the show. Whatever the provocation, Capitalism seems to be the answer.

Why does British humour lend itself so easily to satire is a question worth exploring and asking at length. From Black Mirror to Cunk on Earth, British satirists mock institutions, history and the state of the earth and yet it has taken a Succession-level event to fully impress upon the world, the madness that propels the engines of the global economy.

Brian Cox, as the Murdoch-style media mogul in Succession, isn’t merely an impression, but also the symptom of an age where elusive genius and toxic man-child seamlessly coalesce into an idea that we can hype, worship, obsess about and deride in the same breath. It’s a world where a battle-hardened Ukranian president found time in the middle of a war to pose for a Vogue photoshoot or where a presumed tech genius has publicly revealed himself to be a petty troll.

The likes of Iannucci, Armstrong and others have helped us laugh at the ambivalence of it all but maybe humour isn’t merely an escape here. Maybe Succession also offers a language of comprehension, somewhere between the vile, insolent things we are willing to believe about these arrogant people and the ones that are actually true.