Succession season two: Even more deliciously wicked than before

You’ve probably heard this is an excellent TV show. Believe it. After tonight, you’ll be the one shouting it from the rooftops.

Everything you’ve heard about Succession is true.

It is that good. The deliciously wicked HBO drama about acrid billionaires and their greedy grab for all the power returns tonight for its second season and it is more charged, more intoxicating and more must-see than the last.

Which makes it one of the most exciting TV shows all year.

Succession has the backstabbing and power plays of Game of Thrones, the biting dialogue of Veep, the detailed world-building of Mad Men and the momentum of Killing Eve’s first season all wrapped up in one addictive package.

By now, this is probably sounding all a bit hyperbolic. It’s not. Succession is going to be your new favourite show and you’re going to annoy everyone you know to watch it until they relent. And then they’re going to love you for it.

Vipers’ nest

For the uninitiated, Succession is set in the high-rise world of Manhattan’s glass-and-steel skyscrapers where the uber rich emotionally torture each other for sport.

The Roys are a powerful media family who own cable TV news, newspapers, cruise liners and theme parks. The patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) is getting older and under pressure to name a successor, one of his four adult kids — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck).

In the first season, Kendall was the heir apparent, until several events, including colluding with external forces to launch a hostile takeover against his father, put an end to that. Unfortunately for him, the drug addicted Kendall has a Chappaquiddick-esque moment and is now completely under his father’s thumb.

So that’s where we are going into season two.

Trust no one

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Kendall is a defeated man, sycophantically parroting his father and seeing to the old man’s every whim. Strong’s performance in the first five episodes made available for review is well-calibrated and actually sympathetic. He’s so broken, barely a shell of a person who used to have desires and ambitions.

Roman thinks that puts him in a prime position but his failings as a corporate player have never been more apparent. However, Culkin’s low-key erratic physicality in his performance has never been more exquisite.

Meanwhile, Siobhan, who has mostly worked in politics and outside the family business, is ready to make her move. She may seem the strongest and most capable, but like her siblings, her entire emotional framework is predicated on her father’s approval.

Logan Roy is never going to win father of the year. This is a man who plays his kids off one another in ways that the Stanford Prison Experiment would do well to replicate. Every episode, someone’s position is elevated or lessened.

Father of the year? Definitely not.

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Then there are all the hangers-on, the various employees and advisers who’ll happily whisper something out of earshot but when confronted, can only agree with Logan. Everyone is jockeying for position, playing a game of pure self-interest.

And the sneaky MVP award goes to Greg, a seemingly earnest Hicksville Roy cousin who always manages to put himself in exactly the right spot.

These people are all smart but they’re also all paranoid and selfish, which is a toxic combination but perfect for television.

But as much as Succession is the kind of watching that makes you twirl your invisible (or maybe literal) evil moustache, delighting in the awful things these people do to each other, there’s a serious and considered layer to it.

Tom and Greg, plotting. Always plotting.

Succession never suggests that these zero-point-one-percenters are somehow capitalist heroes to be emulated — they’re exposed as the callous, vile and grubby monsters they are.

It’s an indictment of this rapacious world where decency is considered quaint and where Logan can browbeat his family and employees about not knowing the cost of milk while simultaneously engaging in frat-house-type humiliation. There is no moral high ground.

It’s enough for the buttered lobster to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Succession was created by Jesse Armstrong, who’s written for Armando Iannucci on The Thick of It and co-created Peep Show, so you know he can plunge the depths of human darkness and turn it into farce and satire.

The writing here is so wonderful, every line of dialogue is cracking with energy and venom, while all the performances are masterful.

Get ready to become Succession’s greatest advocate.

Succession season two starts tonight on Fox Showcase and Foxtel Now at 8.30pm. The first season is available to stream on Foxtel or for digital purchase on iTunes, Google Play and similar platforms

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