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

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.