‘Succession’ Ran on Cruelty and Wit, Then Got Out Before Either Ran Out

Jesse Armstrong’s Succession ran for four seasons and 39 episodes on HBO, from June 3, 2018, to May 28, 2023. It is a satirical black comedy-drama about the Roy family, owners of the global media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar RoyCo, and their fight for control as the health of patriarch Logan Roy declines.

That premise is a machine for humiliation, and the show knows it. Brian Cox plays Logan, born in Dundee into poverty before he built the company. His four children — Connor (Alan Ruck) from his first marriage, and Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) from his second — circle the throne with different degrees of competence and the same appetite.

Trailer, via HBO.

The Roy children and the Waystar RoyCo throne

Kendall is the power-hungry one, the eldest son of the second marriage and the most obvious heir, which is exactly why he suffers most. Roman is the middle child, immature, allergic to responsibility, and often short of the common sense Logan demands. Shiv is politically savvy and the most natural reader of a room. Connor is estranged, the oldest, and the least considered.

The show’s engine is not who deserves the company. It is who Logan will anoint this week, and how quickly he will withdraw it.

Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s fiancé and then her husband, is a Waystar executive promoted from the fringes into the family’s line of fire. Nicholas Braun’s Greg Hirsch, Logan’s grandnephew, arrives unfamiliar with the rough terrain and ends up indentured to Tom in his quest for a place at the company. Hiam Abbass plays Marcia, Logan’s third wife, often at odds with his mistrustful children.

A cast that turns boardroom cruelty into comedy

Peter Friedman’s Frank Vernon, COO and later vice-chairman, is the old guard — Logan’s longtime confidant, Kendall’s mentor and godfather, and a man Roman dislikes. J. Smith-Cameron’s Gerri Kellman, Dagmara Domińczyk’s Karolina Novotney, Justine Lupe’s Willa Ferreyra and David Rasche’s Karl Muller fill out the rooms where decisions get made and blame gets assigned.

The casting was assembled deliberately. On October 6, 2016, Cox, Strong, Culkin, Snook, Braun and Macfadyen were announced in lead roles for the pilot. On November 4, 2016, Abbass, Ruck, Rob Yang, Parker Sawyers and Friedman joined the main cast. Later additions included Holly Hunter in season two, and Alexander Skarsgård and Adrien Brody in season three.

Four seasons, 39 episodes, and a fixed end date

The run is short by the standards of prestige television, and that is a strength. Succession never had to pad. It aired four seasons and 39 episodes and stopped.

What it did with those episodes earned it three Golden Globe wins for Best Television Series – Drama and three Primetime Emmy wins for Outstanding Drama Series, among other accolades. Critics and publications have named it one of the greatest television series of all time, praising its writing, acting, humor, musical score, directing, production values and its examination of its subject matter.

What Succession gets right, and what it repeats

The best material is the family’s private language. Logan’s children do not argue about strategy so much as audition for love in a conference room. Kendall’s neediness, Roman’s jokes, Shiv’s calculation and Connor’s irrelevance are all versions of the same wound, and the show is smart enough to let them collide without explaining the joke.

Tom and Greg are the show’s other register: the outsiders who learn that proximity to power is its own reward and its own corruption. Tom’s promotion from the edges of Waystar into the family is one of the series’ cleanest arcs. Greg’s bumbling opportunism is the comic counterweight, and Braun plays the gap between what Greg understands and what he wants without ever closing it.

The weakness is repetition. Four seasons of the same cycle — a child reaches for control, Logan pulls it back, the child absorbs the humiliation — wears down the tension even when the individual scenes land. By the later seasons the show is often restating a thesis it proved in season one. The satirical frame around Waystar RoyCo also thins: the conglomerate is a stage for family warfare more than a subject in itself, and the media business never quite becomes as vivid as the people running it.

None of that undoes the performances. Cox gives Logan a brash, unsparing authority that makes every room colder when he enters it. Strong plays Kendall’s self-destruction as a performance Kendall is giving to an audience of one. Culkin’s Roman is funny in a way that curdles, and Snook’s Shiv is the only Roy who can lie to herself and to everyone else at the same time.

Why the ending matters more than the middle

The series centers on uncertainty about Logan’s health and the fight for control that uncertainty creates. That is a premise built to end, not to run forever, and Succession treats its conclusion as the point rather than an obligation. The last episode aired May 28, 2023, and the show arrives there with its central question intact: what does a family become when the thing holding it together is a company?

The answer is not flattering, and the show does not pretend otherwise. That is the part worth keeping.

Where Succession sits against its reputation is a fair argument. It is not flawless — the middle seasons coast on a formula, and the corporate satire is thinner than the family drama it wraps. But the writing, the cast and the willingness to end on time put it above most of what television produced in its decade. The acclaim is earned, even if the claim that it ranks among the greatest series ever made oversells a show that spent a lot of its run repeating itself.

A ranking of the Roys’ claims to the company, as the series presents them:

1. Kendall — the assumed heir, the most damaged by the assumption.
2. Shiv — the sharpest political mind, the least trusted.
3. Roman — the funniest, the least serious, occasionally the most useful.
4. Connor — the oldest, the furthest from the chair.

Succession is a great cast doing great work inside a structure that eventually runs in place. Its first season is the argument; its last is the payoff. The stretch between them is where the show tests your patience, and where it still, most nights, wins.

Brian Cox · HBO · Jeremy Strong · Logan Roy · Succession · TV Review