And here is one more HBO series that focuses on publicizing the United States like we had never seen them before. Head for Manhattan from Park Avenue and the mansions of 5th Avenue overlooking Central Park. Welcome to the Roys, who would make the Dallas Ewings look like good, innocent people. The Roys run a media empire, Waystar Royco, founded by Patriarch Logan, a self-made man from Scotland. The cool New Yorker passes over him like water on a duck’s wing. He is an absolute domestic tyrant who rarely mistreats those around him.
War … of succession on Wall Street
At the start of the first season – available on OCS – he is the victim of an attack which suggests that he will no longer be able to resume his duties at the head of the company. Some of his children believe they can take the opportunity to take his place. They will have to endure the vengeance of this masculine Medea, ready to kill his children to keep his place.
The first season is fascinating for what it tells of the media world confronted with the arrival of the Internet. Can the well-established group survive or will it end up worthless, overtaken by young shoots? Is the future in cable and local channels as the father believes or must we quickly turn to digital to survive?
What is very successful in this series is the mixture of family and patrimonial interests, which reaches its climax in an episode where the hyper-authoritarian patriarch finds himself with his children in family therapy. Laughs guaranteed, because there is a form of black humor in this fiction also featuring the power of nuisance of a monster on his family. The visual universe of the series is dark. The streets of New York are filmed with leaden gray skies. And it’s not the getaways to Europe or the Hamptons second home that inspires more joy.
Trump, Sanders, metoo … the little stones of the writers
The writers also had fun sprinkling the series with winks, in connection with reality. The television group evokes Fox News, especially since Logan does not hide his connections with the Republican elite, the President of the United States included. Likewise, Siobahn, the daughter – wonderful Sarah Snook – of the family who works for a glory of the Democratic camp who evokes a kind of Bernie Sanders. Not to mention the eldest son, Connor who deserves his first name to a letter, is a kind of idiot who wants to become president of the United States believing that the rich like him should not pay taxes.
At the Roy’s, politics and business are mixed up, even if in the second season this dimension may be less present, the series focusing on a takeover project, a general assembly power of attorney which would pass the merger between Suez and Veolia for a pretty romance for romantic teenagers.
Psychological study
If overall, the series is gripping, it is perhaps more by the personality of the characters to which we end up becoming attached. The figure of the castrating father is obviously a little too painful to be credible (the basis of the manipulation is to alternate positive and negative gestures in order to better catch his prey) and certain reversals are borderline acceptable. The end of season 1 is worthy of a regional soap opera for public channel without inspiration. Still, the second season ends, it, with a masterful twist that will hold in suspense all those who will go to the end. You have to be great screenwriters to be able to convince with such an incredible twist.
There remains Roman, the overly cynical third son, whose intimate torments he seeks to conceal, one cannot help but wonder. Or Marcia, Logan’s third wife, a Frenchwoman, both distant and seemingly very interested in the affairs of the family business. Without forgetting the pathetic second knives, like Tom, Shiv’s husband trying to find his place in the middle of which a crocodile backwater that has not been fed for a month looks like a haven of peace.
And then there is the immense Jérémy Strong, brilliant interpreter of Kendall, the mistreated and castrated son, lost between his disastrous love life, his multiple addictions and his desire to exist despite the shadow of his terrible father. This masterful actor justifies spending the two times eight hours of the series, as he succeeds in embodying things on his face. At the same time absent and determined, in pieces and powerful. This actor is just fascinating to follow throughout the episodes.
Succession season 1 (10 episodes) and season 2 (10 episodes), available on OCS. Both seasons are also available on DVD (HBO Studios)
The shooting of season 3 has been delayed by the Covid 19.
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