It has been a fight for supremacy soaked in tears and recriminations. Auld acquaintances have been sacrificed, new enemies made, and through it all wild cursing has filled the air.
So much for the SNP leadership contest, what about the new series of Succession?
In a moment worthy of Sliding Doors, one succession battle ends today with the naming of the new First Minister, while the other Succession begins its fourth and final series, at the close of which a replacement for media mogul Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) will emerge.
Or so show creator Jesse Armstrong has hinted. In the world of Succession not a lot can be taken for granted.
READ MORE: Brian Cox's pick for SNP leader
When we last saw Logan he had once again out-foxed his grasping children, Shiv, Kendall, and Roman (Sarah Snook, Jeremy String, Kieran Culkin) for control of his company.
Now he is just days away from selling his firm and buying another, plus it is his birthday.
Not that these events make him happy. Logan walks through the party at his Manhattan home like a bear that has just woken from hibernation to be told he has missed breakfast. “Munsters,” he sighs, surveying the gathering of acolytes scoffing his food and necking his expensive booze, “meet the ******* Munsters.”
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Meanwhile, the “rats”, as Logan calls the three children who tried to oust him, are at the other side of the country setting up a new media brand – The Hundred, which Kendall describes unpromisingly as “Substack meets MasterClass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker”.
Potential investors have flown in to hear a pitch, but the trio are distracted by news that there might be another business they can sink their incisors into, one that would better suit their interests.
READ MORE: Cox happy to move on
And if daddy dearest should be after the same firm, then that's just too bad. The game is on again.
No one comes to Succession for the storylines. Once the basic plot had been established in the first series – entitled kids fight each other and dad for control of company; dad refuses to stand down – that was it. Everything since has been a variation on the same theme.
What sets this comedy drama apart from the rest is the sheer quality of everything else it has to offer. From dialogue and characters to performances and Nicholas Britell’s Emmy-winning opening music, complete with demon pianist, the savagely funny Succession is a five-star experience all the way.
Even the swearing is several grades above. Where Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It had a degree in effing and blinding, the Roys have Harvard professorships.
Logan remains at the top of the family tree, but one of the joys of Succession has been watching initially second-string characters climb their way to the higher reaches.
Chief among them is Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s husband, played magnificently by the British actor Matthew Macfadyen. When push came to shove, Tom preferred to get into bed with Logan, metaphorically speaking, rather than his own wife.
With Tom on Team Logan is the hapless, clueless, but might-just-be-smarter-than-any-of-them, Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun). The two have become a double act in their own right, and just wait till you hear what they call themselves.
Also clinging on is Connor (Alan Ruck), Logan’s first born, still trying to make a name for himself in politics with close to zero success. And keep an eye out for the returning Carrie (Zoe Winters), Logan’s self-billed “friend, assistant and adviser”.
Every single one of them is a truly awful human being, which makes it all the more enjoyable when they suffer, and they do, in their own way. Logan's money has never been able to wash away the stink of family failure that has been with him since his boyhood in Dundee. No credit card can buy his children an ounce of their father’s talent. Daddy loves his kids, but despises them. He’s a complicated guy, Logan.
Succession is not the best thing on television ever, and anyone who says so has not seen The Sopranos or The Wire, but it is the best thing right now.
And now, like the song says, the end is near. What a triumph this has been for Brian Cox, even by the high standards of his career. In Logan Roy, red in tooth and claw capitalism has not had such an irresistible face since Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood.
How we shall miss the old devil, and his best bar none tune.
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