Succession: family, power and money

On the surface, Succession is a business drama: a global media giant based in New York, shareholdings, boardrooms, takeover manoeuvres. The show, however, treats that material not as an economic story but as a family tragedy. Created by Jesse Armstrong and broadcast on HBO from 3 June 2018 to 28 May 2023, it ran for four seasons and 39 episodes. The argument of this piece is that in Succession money is not a goal but a unit of love. The characters do not fight for wealth itself; they fight for the approval that wealth stands in for.

An estate, an ailing father, a fight

The starting point is plain. The Roy family owns Waystar RoyCo, a media conglomerate headquartered in New York, and as the health of the patriarch, Logan Roy, declines, a struggle for control of the company begins. The frame fits the familiar shape of royal dynasties and ancient tragedies. Wikipedia notes that the show has often been compared to Shakespeare, particularly to King Lear, and the comparison is apt: when an old man’s estate is up for grabs, the question of who inherits becomes a tension between the children’s love for their father and their wish to overthrow him.

The series handles that tension less through the question of who will win than through the question of what winning costs. That nobody is truly happy as the estate changes hands is the show’s central finding. Wealth does not provide security here; it turns every relationship into a negotiation. When a relative is both ally and rival, affection becomes a form of leverage. As the children try to measure their standing in their father’s eyes, his generosity and his contempt work as the same instrument. This is why the characters so often seem both very rich and deeply deprived: they have everything, yet the one thing they would call their own depends on someone else’s consent.

Here the classical structure of tragedy comes into play. The tragic hero is undone not by an external catastrophe but by a flaw that grows out of character. Succession’s figures are tested less by outside enemies than by their own habits: the fear of being belittled, a hunger for approval, an unending debt to the father. What the show offers, in this respect, is a reading of power as a psychological problem, and it does so without turning its characters into either victims or monsters.

Form: the documentary feel and quiet luxury

The show’s form keeps a fitting distance from this story. According to Wikipedia, it was shot mainly in Manhattan on 35mm film, with predominantly handheld camerawork inspired by Dogme 95 and intended to resemble a mockumentary. Cinematographer Patrick Capone described the camerawork as voyeuristic. The result is the sense of watching private moments from outside, slightly without permission. The camera sometimes drifts from face to face mid-sentence, and sometimes arrives late to catch a reaction. That imperfect gaze is the opposite of the polished look of much prestige television, and it strengthens the impression that the lines are being spoken in a real room under real threat.

The costume design follows the same logic. Michelle Matland’s neutral, logo-free wardrobe has been called “stealth wealth” and “quiet luxury” in the same source. The choice shows a class whose wealth no longer needs to announce itself. Being able to read quiet luxury is itself a sign of membership: someone who recognises the quality of the cloth rather than the brand belongs to that world. The show thus takes as its subject not the display of money but its invisibility, and implies that wealth is most effective when it feels no need to explain itself.

Nicholas Britell’s score is the aural counterpart of this aesthetic. Wikipedia describes the music as a blend of hip hop and classical music and says the main title theme received critical acclaim. Putting the two genres side by side matches the show’s view of class: one is the music of the street, the other of the salon, and both are languages of displayed power. That hybrid idiom summarises the series’ mood in a few bars, a ceremonial weight meeting a hardness that comes from the street within the same theme.

Comedy and cruelty: one sentence, two jobs

What sets Succession apart is that it carries such a heavy subject through comedy. The insults the characters trade really hurt and also make us laugh, and the double function is no accident. Humour here is not an escape but a weapon: a person hides their own pain inside a joke and wounds the other person with the same joke. Even when the viewer laughs, the cost of the next sentence can be felt. The series was widely praised for its writing, acting, humour and subject matter, and Wikipedia reports an average of about 95 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. Those numbers still do not describe the tone. The real achievement is holding biting humour and genuine sorrow in the same scene.

The tone also shapes the show’s moral outlook. Succession never fully pulls the viewer to anyone’s side. The characters’ pain is visible, but it does not excuse the harm they do to others. The series keeps sympathy and judgment alive together. That balance lifts it out of the genre of the misery of the rich; what is of interest here is not why these people suffer but why their suffering comes bundled with the authority to crush other people’s lives.

Awards and staying power

The series won three Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series, in 2020, 2022 and 2023, at the 72nd, 74th and 75th ceremonies. The same source records that BBC Culture ranked it tenth among the 100 greatest series of the 21st century in 2021, that Rolling Stone placed it eleventh on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows in 2022, and that Variety put it thirteenth in 2023. Such lists show that the show was not discussed for a single season only.

The deeper reason for its durability is that it asks a contemporary question in a classical form: how far does a person’s worth depend on another’s approval, and does money loosen that tie or tighten it? The show’s answer is neither hopeless nor comforting. Wealth does not remove dependence; it only makes it more expensive. That is why the series begins as the story of a media empire and remains the portrait of a family trying to put a price on affection. After four seasons, what lingers is less the question of who holds power than the question of what the person who wants it has lost.