How Succession and the Roys killed bingeing and brought back suspense in TV
Ahead of next week’s finale, all anyone wants to talk about is TV’s most infamous dynasty. Have Shiv, Roman and Kendall killed bingeing and ushered in a new era for streaming?
Let’s be honest there’s only one thing you’re talking about at work, with your family, with your partner, with your mates. It’s all about the very last episode of Succession.
Who’s getting the company? Will Shiv and the scary blond dude outplay Kendall? Will Roman stop crying and get back in the game? Will the evil mum, the evil stepmum and Gerri team up together?
Will that kinda fascist president get them all killed? Was Logan really in that coffin or is he going to jump out of the bush at the last minute and tell them all to “F..K OFF!”?
Even if, like me, you’ve always struggled to get into the rambunctious Roy family and their boardroom shenanigans, you simply have had to rush to Binge every Monday and get the latest Succession gossip if you want to get through most daily conversations.
It was no different right at the end of last year with The White Lotus season two. Week in, week out everyone from my mates overseas to my buddies at The Australian HQ were desperate to talk about how things were getting worse and weirder for Jennifer Coolidge and co in Sicily.
The White Lotus set a tone for the TV year of 2023. Weekly doses are in, binges are out. The Last of Us – that most intelligent and heart-rendering and shocking of zombie horror shows – took on the weekly baton, with viewers wondering if poor old Pedro Pascal and his little mate Bella Ramsay would make it out alive.
And then there were the devastating vignettes The Last of Us offered up each week on a different slice of post-apocalyptic life that managed to get everyone talking.
None more so than the devastating gay love story between Park and Recreation’s Nick Offerman and Australian telly star Murray Bartlett.
And after that huge hit, we had Succession. And after Succession?
Well HBO – the uniting force between the three most talked about pieces of pop culture, nay art, of the past six months – appear to have it all laid out.
No one is saying HBO was never cool. It’s known the power of the drip drip drip since Soprano days.
But the running line of pop culture, where TV reigns, has been abundantly clear in 2023 so far. The people want conversation-making, community building, weeks-long running series.
Maybe it’s the end of Covid. You’re back in the office, you’re back in the cafe – you need something to talk about, you need something to bond about. And who has the time or the desire to be stuck at home looking at a screen for too long.
It’s hard to think of a full-on streaming binge experience that has really dominated the national and international consciousness this year.
Colin from Accounts – a huge breakout international Aussie hit – right at the end of 2022 was a classic comedy binge. Around the same time the world fell in love with Netflix’s kooky Addams Family reboot, Wednesday.
But those shows landed around Christmas, when you’ll do anything to shut your relatives up. The timing was perfect for hours and hours of bingeing.
Since January, what is there?
Netflix’s Beef – the story of a bizarre stalking war starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong – was a talking point for about two minutes for its sharp plot and great Asian-American cast.
After those two minutes, the show was “cancelled” over co-star David Choe’s past admission he had fabricated a claim he had been sexually assaulted.
And after that one extra minute of controversy, nothing. Everyone moved on from Beef.
The same streamer’s other big play in the first half of this year – The Diplomat – did get a lot of praise, especially Keri Russell’s central performance as the glamorous US Ambassador to Britain.
I imagine I wasn’t alone in thinking this political thriller was treading ground already covered – in a more thrilling way – by the likes of BBC’s Bodyguard. And once again, it hasn’t resonated in a way any of the week by week shows have.
The Brits have never bought the hype of bingeing, and you can see why this year. Anyone with a Binge subscription was surely addicted to the BBC’s final season of Happy Valley for its entire eight week or so run.
You found yourself just obsessed for months by the cat and mouse game between Sarah Lancashire’s heroic local copper (one of the best TV performances ever) and Jame Norton’s psychopath to end all psychopaths.
Some streamers – especially Apple – are trying to go with a middle road between bingeing and week-long anticipation. The current king of middlebrow streaming – that old Hollywood heart-throb Harrison Ford – has had two hits this year.
The first Ford success is Shrinking on Apple TV, which seems to have charmed everyone. Especially this critic’s father, who has demanded this column talk about Shrinking for months.
Ford plays a psychiatrist trying to help his colleague, Jason Segal (How I Met Your Mother), with his wife’s death. It’s easy, it’s middlebrow, and it put out at least two episodes a week.
Apple is also trying the “few episodes a time” model with its new comedy-detective outing High Desert, with Oscar winner Patricia Arquette as an unlikely private investigator.
It’s a system that works in a way- you get a mini streaming binge but not enough to make you feel bloated.
But Ford’s 1923 (Stan) – the spin off of every boomer’s favourite show Yellowstone – is a classic drip drip drip and how much better for it. The suspense at the end of every episode, and the wait you’re made to endure, is what makes it work.
This second Ford hit is also more what you expect from Indiana Jones, even if he is slumming it with television these days. Shooting and fighting and riding horses with Helen Mirren. It’s ace stuff.
The other action sensation of 2023 was a week by week journey in Sir Patrick Stewart’s last outing as that greatest of Star Trek captains, Jean Luc Picard.
Picard (Amazon Prime) is absolutely worth a look if you’ve missed it. Enough nostalgia for any geek with all Stewart’s crewmates from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
But it had plenty of hyperspace action and Borg-shaped twists to keep new viewers hanging on their seats every seven days.
And another week-by-week action madcap ride has been the utterly weird Mrs Davis.
Created by Damon Lindelhof – the genius behind the utterly brilliant HBO version of Watchmen, it’s the story of a nun (Betty Gilpin) hunting for the Holy Grail in order to stop an evil supercomputer.
Considering how difficult it is for the brain to deal with such a weird concept as Mrs Davis, thank god you get a week to wait before you have to dive in again. The real question now is: what will be the next Succession?
What will be the show we want to talk about each week? HBO will certainly want us all talking about The Idol starring Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) as a pop star under the spell of a cult leader (The Weeknd).
It’s already caused controversy for its behind the scenes drama and very sexually explicit content.
We will be forced to deal with the second season of And Just Like That – the godawful sequel to the totally perfect Sex and the City. Maybe that isn’t worth dragging out for months. And HBO will be pushing out a whole series of Colin Farrell – at the peak of his powers – playing Batman’s most intriguing of villains, The Penguin, in the months to come.
The Brits meanwhile are gearing to drip out the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who – which will keep the UK and Aussies gripped with David Tennant finally back at the helm of the TARDIS.
And everyone’s favourite murder mystery – Only Murders in the Building – is only a few weeks away with Meryl Streep joining Steve Martin and Selena Gomez for the drip drip drip of blood and death each week.
Thank god we’re leaving the binge behind. Thank god we’ve got something to bond over and mull over and embrace each week.
And let’s hope there’s more shows like Succession to keep us satisfied through to the end of an already stellar year in TV.
