The era of postlikeability has dawned, and we revel in it
HBO’s hit series ‘Succession’ features a cast of grasping tycoons with few redeeming qualities. It beats its rivals gloved hands down.
WATCHING THE RICH DOING TERRIBLE THINGS ON TV IS AN ESCAPE VALVE FROM ALL THE GRIM THINGS THEIR REAL-LIFE COUNTERPARTS DO
Edeck motional of his gunship’ family s incoming”, says Kendall Roy, watching from the oligarch-level yacht as its patriarch, Logan, approaches in a helicopter. “Send out the distress signal, we are under attack,” adds sister Siobhan, known as Shiv.
We are, indeed, under attack. Verbal attack. The just-finished second series of HBO’s
Succession, a fast-walking-and-talking gallop through self-made Scottish mogul Logan Roy’s “empire of s**t” and its dynastic media ambition, has memed and gifted itself into the spotlight. It has cruised from “sleeper” hit (meaning that media people love it and keep talking it up on socials) to actual hit (meaning enough viewers love it for it to be renewed for another season, which is what has happened).
The surprising thing about the buzz and love for
Succession, according to many commentators, is that people love it even though all the superrich Roys are repellent human beings. Is this perhaps a show where we are meant to fall in love not with its characters but with their carapace, the beautifully rendered “Rich Kids of Instagram” aesthetic? (Uniformed staff, private jets, New England neutrals, yacht bling, penthouse steel and glass.)
It is not. Talk of likeability on TV or in books, plays or any other sort of cultural fodder is looking redundant. This show succeeds precisely because likeability is one luxury that we don’t need anymore, especially among the rich and powerful. We may finally have stopped looking for redemption in all the usual places. The US is led by a nepotistic ruling family. Britain is being torn apart by internecine political power struggles. Strongmen-bullies are in charge around the world
— and we are helpless.
“Well Kim Jong Pop, that’s not how things work in this country,” Roman tells his father in season one, when Logan wants to buy up “all the news” he doesn’t already own. But in season two, when the Roys shut down Vaulter, a millennial news website they had bought on a whim, we see that bullying with billionaire menace is, in fact, exactly how things work. Just ask Gawker. (In totally unconnected news, real-life media heir James Murdoch last week bought a minority share in online news company Vice.)
By watching rich people doing terrible things but being witty and well-dressed about it, we give ourselves an escape valve from all the grim things that their real-life counterparts are actually doing in the world. There’s a pattern here:
Succession isn’t the first show to do this. It’s just the funniest.
For those seeking more postlikeability in their lives, Showtime’s Billions is a satisfying collision of hedge funders and political ambition. It’s testosterone-max, but has far more tenderness at its heart than Succession, with a central couple, Chuck and Wendy Rhoades (Paul Giamatti and Maggie Siff), who love each other on some level, despite a history of mutual betrayal and a painfully unequal interest in torture dungeons.
Over on Netflix, its new streamer The Politician throws big production bucks at a more mannered, less turbocharged take on all the power that money can buy, complete with Gwyneth Paltrow doing the gardening in couture.
Succession was created by Jesse Armstrong, a Briton who co-wrote Peep Show and The
Thick of It: foul-mouthed and cringe-filled comedies, full of the kinds of socially awkward people you perhaps shared an office with. In these two shows, Armstrong observed civilians under pressure: respectively south London flat sharers with no money and terrible jobs, and politicians and advisers at the mercy of a relentless news cycle and venal bosses. It was all relatable.
In Succession, Armstrong has upgraded effortlessly from characters in the three zeros income bracket to those with nine zeros. There are some mere millionaires, notably the side-flunkies in the WaystarRoyco company orbit who actually have to work for a living (including fan favourite Gerri, general counsel and dirty-talker-in-chief to Roman).
As Connor, the oldest — and Trumpiest — Roy son, tells lessaffluent cousin Greg, the latter’s potential inheritance of $5m is perhaps the worst amount anyone can have. “Five’ sa nightmare. Can’t retire, not worth it to work.” (“The poorest rich person in America,” chips in Shiv’s husband Tom, who probably hasn’t even got $5m of his own, poor soul.) It is no coincidence that Greg, brought up ostracised from the Roy clan, is the blundering newcomer who still has vestiges of decency about him. He doesn’t know there is a “glass floor” that protects the children of the elite from falling downwards.
Reportedly the Succession writers are told to read the Financial Times (along with Vanity Fair and the New York Times). And why not? In recent weeks alone the FT has covered a spying scandal at Credit Suisse that reportedly began with a neighbour dispute in Zurich’s most exclusive lakeside enclave, while WeWork, the overheated office space firm on a mission to “elevate the world’s consciousness” has morphed from unicorn to donkey in weeks.
Until season three of
Succession arrives, there are many consolations to be found in the heady postlikeability of the real-life power players. /© The Financial Times 2019