An altogether crass, vulgar, fictionalized portrayal of an American oligarchic family, Jesse Armstrong’s Succession is perhaps one of the strongest arguments in favor of citizens creating an estate plan/business succession plan for themselves. The obvious inspiration for Succession is the Murdoch family, the billionaire media moguls who own vast swaths of right-wing media from The Times and The New York Post, to The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Telegraph as well as Fox News, Sky News, 21^st Century Fox, Dow Jones & Company, and even the book publisher HarperCollins. Their power and influence is extraordinary.

Much like the Murdochs, the Roys in Succession are a tumultuous bunch who oversee a huge conservative news conglomerate called Waystar RoyCo, along with its provocative but entertaining and propagandistic “Monday Night Football” styled news network called ATN. It is described as “news for angry for old people.” The Roys are helmed by bombastic, temperamental patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) who is a respected, albeit shrewd, elder statesman in the business. His leadership style is often brash and unpredictable. Throughout the show, the central tension concerns which is of his four children Logan intends to succeed him as head of his company. There is his eldest son, Connor Roy (Alan Ruck), who is the only son from Logan’s first marriage, but he is mostly uninvolved with family business affairs. He is a somewhat silly character who appears from time to time with various quixotic delusions of grandeur, like deciding to suddenly run for president on a platform of refusing to pay taxes. His on-again, off-again love interest is a former call girl named Willa (Justine Lupe), his junior by several decades.

From his second marriage, Logan had three children. The eldest is Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), presumed heir to the family business who constantly struggles for power and the approval of his father, however he is also a junkie, an addict, and an absentee father to two children with ex-wife Rava (Natalie Gold). Next, is Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin), a childish, sexually deviant, bawdy kid who frequently serves as a source of comedic relief in the show. And lastly, there is Siobhan “Shiv” Roy (Sarah Snook) a sarcastic, educated woman who departs from her family by having more left-leaning politics. She works for a liberal Democratic political campaign, but eventually she succumbs to cynicism in pursuit of an executive career within her family’s company. She is quietly one of the more competent and cutthroat tacticians in the family, but her recurring bouts of cynicism prove to be a central problem in the show. In many ways, this whole show leads one to take Shiv’s perspective –this disgustingly indulgent glimpse behind the curtain of the petty foibles within America’s billionaire class is an exercise in pure cynicism and disillusionment.      

Across four seasons, we witness an endless string of F-bombs, absurdly lude jokes, and various scandals and mishaps while the Roy children –especially Kendall—attempt to unseat their father and his stranglehold over the family company. However, between several board coups, a few complex venture capital investments, more than one failed marriage, vicious interpersonal vendettas, health scares, and a constant battle with the press, the old man always seems to come out on top. That is, until a tragic event occurs early in the fourth season.

At any rate, while I can admit this show is incredibly addicting and filled with all the high-intensity drama we have come to expect from modern television, in my view shows like Succession are simply exhausting. This show is almost akin to a reality show, albeit one featuring four greedy scions of an uber-wealthy circle. They risk nothing for their fellow citizens while living in a vapid, materialistic world where nothing really matters –private jets, yachts, top floor penthouses, chauffeurs, personal security guards, and regular six-figure meals. Succession shows us a world where no one is heroic, admirable, or praiseworthy. Even the people surrounding the Roy family are unsurprisingly revealed to be a pack of leeches looking out for no one but themselves –people like perennial oddball Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), who marries Shiv, and his clumsy sidekick Greg (Nicholas Braun), a cousin of the Roys who finds himself in some incredibly compromising situations to protect the family. And they are joined by a gaggle of sycophantic lawyers, financial advisors, and corporate executives, not to mention all the various women who are brought into the orbit of the Roys, quite evidently chasing after the wealth and security afforded by the Roy family.       

As is evident in the show, when cynicism, scheming, and bottomless avariciousness run rampant throughout the upper echelons, these vices eventually spill out into broader society, and the trend unsurprisingly yields a cynical, scheming society filled with avaricious vultures. In a world where nice guys finish last, is it nevertheless too much to ask for a character who has at least a modicum of virtue, selflessness, and wit?