As the finale looms, the darkly comedic drama about pettiness and politics stands as a brilliantly warped mirror of what Americans have suffered through since 2016
A fact I think about often when I watch Succession, perhaps the defining fact of the HBO series, is that its first full-cast table read was on 8 November 2016, AKA election day. The run-through ended with a party at executive producer Adam McKay’s house that was supposed to celebrate the victory of Hillary Clinton. It didn’t work out that way. Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv, the psychically bruised, acid-tongued daughter of media titan Logan Roy, later recalled that McKay said: “Well, we’re making the right show.” Series creator Jesse Armstrong remembered the election call for Trump as “such a shock – then five, 10 minutes later, everyone’s living in a new reality”.
Over six years and four seasons, Succession has been, for me and for many viewers, the right show for the moment, a way to process and inhabit that new reality. No other show, I would argue no other cultural product, was better suited to reflect, fillet, riff and even at times anticipate the toxic cartoon rollercoaster of the Trump presidency than a series about a fragile media conglomerate family with more than a few similarities to the Murdochs. In the way that Hamilton immediately conjures the sunny earnestness of the Obama years, or Arrested Development spoofed the silly incompetence of the Bush presidency, or Bo Burnham’s Inside will be the only thing I ever watch to remember the pandemic, Succession is not only inextricable from its national context but emblematic of its atmosphere. When the show concludes this Sunday, it’s the end of a Prestige TV era. And it’s also goodbye to our most incisive, eviscerating and brilliantly warped mirror of the Trump years. (Of course, you could argue that Trump’s era never fully ended – he’s the current Republican frontrunner for 2024.)
