Succession: Season 1

Logan Roy, CEO of international mega-corporation Waystar RoyCo, is turning 80 and his family gather to celebrate. A sudden health scare forces the family to consider the matter of Logan's succession, with his preference for one of his children to take over. However, they all have problems: eldest son Connor is uninterested in the company, business-minded Kendall is a recovering addict with a tendency to fall off the wagon, Roman is immature and irresponsible and Siobhan is a political fixer whose ideology clashes with that of her father. As the question of succession proves pressing, the family members start considering unorthodox means to get what they want.

Succession can be best described as "Game of Thrones in Manhattan," a vicious battle for supremacy between the children of the dying king. Except, since they can't actually kill anyone, people remain alive to realise how badly they've been betrayed and can plot vengeance again later on.

Yet another series about horrible people stabbing one another in the back may not sound appealing and, to start with, Succession struggles with making you care about anything that's going on. The show is a slow burn, to say the least, and it makes the curious decision to sidetrack its lead character and the literal poster boy, Logan Roy (a powerhouse performance by Brian Cox), for most of the first season. However, writer Jesse Armstrong is a student of the political comedy of Armando Iannucci (working alongside him on thematic sister-series The Thick of It and Veep, and their semi-linking movie spin-off In the Loop) and brings that experience to bear on Succession, making its first season a jet-black comedy. The fact these characters are unlikeable is unimportant, because you're laughing at their exploits and misfortunes and don't realise how deeply you've become been invested in the characters' lives until it's too late.

The show's twin aces are the writing and the acting. Both are exceptional, the dialogue being sharp and getting across the potential complexities of hostile takeovers and high-value finance deals in a concise and understandable way. The acting is phenomenal: Cox is the MVP but everyone else is fantastic. Jeremy Strong is formidable as Kendall, the obvious heir apparent whose business acumen is compromised by addiction issues, whilst Kieran Culkin is entertaining as the free-wheeling, irreverent Roman. Sarah Snook is extremely impressive as Siobhan "Shiv" Roy, whose canny political instincts make her arguably the strongest candidate to succeed her father but her lack of business experience is a weakness. Matthew Macfadyen is one of the show's secret weapons as Tom, Shiv's fiance who runs the company's amusement park and cruise division and is obsequious to the family but more ruthless to his own subordinates. In particular, the relationship between Tom and Logan's nephew Greg (a winningly awkward turn by Nicholas Braun) is a source of comedy and, later, pathos.

The first season does flag a little under the weight of its ten-hour run, and it does take a long time - until the two-hour finale when it mixes black comedy with drama with outright horror - for it to reveal its true potential, but when it gets there, it becomes compelling drama for those with patience.

The first season of Succession (****) is available to watch on HBO Max in the USA and NowTV in the UK.