‘A masterclass’: The best show on TV is headed for a buzzsaw finale

Succession (season four)
★★★★★

The best show on television may be coming to an end, but it has no intention of surrendering its title belt just yet. This acidic family drama has always been headed for a buzzsaw finale. The unsparing velocity with which the fractured Roy clan, controllers of a news and entertainment conglomerate, have been marching forward has reached a terminal rate. Something, or someone, has to give.

When the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, recently announced that Succession would be finishing, he emphasised that the decision was made almost 18 months ago, when he convened the writers’ room for this season. You can sense that outcome from the first episode: the mood grows more tense, the stakes are higher, and the possible outcomes plainly definitive. However, the show concludes, it’s clear after watching the first four episodes that Armstrong, like his tyrannical subject, mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox), will not go gentle into that good night.

Brian Cox as the tyrannical media mogul and paterfamilias Logan Roy in the fourth and final season of Succession.Credit: HBO/Binge

It begins at a staple of the series – the family function where the family is fragmented. It’s Logan’s birthday in New York, but following the finale of season three, where he outflanked his own children to sell the bulk of his empire to a Swedish tech tycoon, siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan, aka Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are in Los Angeles trying to build their own company. Having been played as rivals by their father, the unity forged by Kendall’s admissions of his past crimes and the sympathy he received from Shiv and Roman is tenuously holding. Logan calls them “the rats”; it heartens them.

A measure of understanding between the trio hasn’t lessened their presumptuousness. They may joke privately about the human rights abuses of the Saudis they’re about to pitch for funding, but Kendall, Shiv and Roman won’t give a second thought to accepting their money. The ends always justify the means on Succession, and part of what makes it both so scabrously funny and genuinely tragic is that everyone is pulling in their own direction, bewildered that those they profess to care for won’t fall into step with them.

Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are trying to build their own company in the final season of Succession.Credit: HBO/Foxtel

Both sides may be broadly accepting of selling the bulk of Waystar Royco, but that doesn’t mean their plans for the proceeds don’t start to clash. The gravity Logan exerts, whether through inveigling his offspring or motivating them to seek revenge, is seemingly unavoidable. And Armstrong is committed to getting to the very depths of their animus. The sham family counselling in season one, motivated by poor public image and its impact on the stock price, is replaced here by a coruscating meeting that tears away old excuses.

From scene to scene the show remains a masterclass in black humour. The insults and retorts shared by the Roys and their courtiers are both scything and accurate; any time beanpole bumbler Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), a Roy cousin failing upwards, gets near Logan is excruciatingly funny. There’s no show on television where you’d be happier to simply watch the characters interact without storytelling inputs; Roman’s dismissive snark is the sweet nectar of corporate tower dialogue.

But the emotional parameters can’t stay in a holding pattern. Relationships that have foundered, such as the marriage of Shiv and her ambitious Waystar executive husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), are now at the point of reckoning. A long exchange in their marital home cuts through the separated couple’s defensive postures, revealing their uncertainty as to how they should act with each other. The comedy’s implicit function – to leach away the extraneous – is virtually done. The characters are close to their bedrock state.

The more I saw of season four, the happier I am that Succession is heading for an end point. Keeping the show going threatened to make it repetitive: another feud between father and children, another wealthy outsider trying to corral their company. This final season is a mission, one where Armstrong isn’t afraid of an odd old-fashioned twist. “You’re going to be OK because you’re a monster,” one Roy sibling tells Logan, but the rest of us might not fare so well. We’re really going to feel the Succession-sized hole in our viewing needs that is just 10 episodes away.

Succession (season 4) is on Binge from Monday, March 27.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.