The likes of The White Lotus and The Menu allow us to indulge our fantasies of revolt
Succession is back, sweeping portentously over New York’s skyline, reeking of money and menace. Like the very best seasons of The Real Housewives, it has everything: fabulous couture, looming mansions, smashing mini-breaks and the generous invitation to pity or despise almost all the characters in it.
Succession led the way, but since we last left the Roys in late 2021 there has been an explosion of “eat the rich” on screen. The rich have been skewered figuratively in The White Lotus and literally in The Menu. In Triangle of Sadness, the capsize of a super-yacht tumbled influencers and moguls to the bottom of the social hierarchy; in Glass Onion, a tech bro billionaire figure was dramatically relieved of his priceless art collection. There has perhaps never been a worse time to be a fictional oligarch. If you’re lucky, you’ll be merely miserable (your riches, you see, will have robbed you of everything that truly matters in life). At worst, you’ll be elaborately dead.
