Pure, undiluted genius: Succession reviewed

I have never ever watched a TV series I have enjoyed more than Succession (Now TV). There’s stuff I’d put in the same league, maybe — Fauda, Babylon Berlin, Band of Brothers, Utopia, Gomorrah, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and so on — but absolutely nothing beats it. It is, quite simply, a work of pure, undiluted genius.

Which wasn’t what I expected when my friend Toby recommended it to me a few weeks ago. ‘It’s about this media dynasty, a bit like the Murdochs. And the kids spend their whole time scheming and competing as to which one is eventually going to take over the company from the bullying patriarch Logan Roy,’ he said. This all sounded a bit grown-up, earnest and worthy to me.

But Succession is none of those things, as perhaps I should have guessed from the fact it was created by Jesse Armstrong, co-author of perhaps the most enduring and wickedly funny of all the Noughties sitcoms, Peep Show. Apart from seeming to know his subject matter inside out — and the world of limos, helicopters, boardroom meetings, weekends in the Hamptons and Bohemian Grove-style retreats is all depicted with luscious plausibility — Armstrong has an instinct always to go for the joke, even in the darkest, most inappropriate moments.

The embodiment of this tendency is the permanently wisecracking youngest son Roman (Kieran Culkin). Proudly shallow, puerile, flippant, uncultured, cynical, he might quite possibly be the brightest of the kids, but has chosen to squander his brainpower on acerbic, Peep Show-style one-liners which I’d dearly love to quote to you because they’re so brilliant and colourful and hilariously on point. Problem is, that would involve sullying my viewer experience with a pen and paper, and, unfortunately, the series is still too cultish to have yet acquired sites where dedicated fans do this job for you.