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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
99
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Jun 1, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Succession’s final season starts spectacularly strong, with equal parts high-stakes drama and laugh-out-loud comedy. Powerhouse performances from the Roy clan offer a dazzling masterclass of buttoned-up emotions competing with years of desperately craving approval from the family patriarch.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 7, 2023
Mar 24, 2023
Season 4 Review:
The fourth and (boo-hoo!) final season about a dysfunctional media family kicks off like gangbusters. With a killer cast led by Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong, this last hurrah stakes it claim on series immortality. Astounding, all of it. TV doesn't get better than this.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Succession’s fourth and final season is a shining example of the best qualities of long-form storytelling, and of TV in particular. When we’ve lived with characters for multiple seasons, there’s a sense that we know them, and know them well. ... It is a joy to discover all the ways these characters can still sneak up and grab us, all the ways we can still be walloped by a smile, a quick phone call, or a casual family gathering.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Succession plunges into its fourth and final season with trademark ferocity and a clear sense of purpose, in a world where high-stakes financial transactions and dysfunctional family dynamics go hand in hand. There’s no shortage of qualities to admire about the Emmy-winning show, but none more vital than the theme of a legendary patriarch whose children don’t measure up to him.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
“Succession” is a brilliant show, and the first four episodes of the new season are no different. ... The writing remains razor sharp, and the acting is uniformly brilliant, though Strong’s Kendall is somewhat subdued in the first four episodes. ... That’s what we’ll really miss, after all — spending time with a bunch of awful people doing awful things, but doing them in such a fantastically entertaining way.
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IndieWireMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
That’s the goal, at least, for Jesse Armstrong and his talented creative team: to be remembered among the best, to end strong, to find a goodbye as fitting as it is stirring. Based on the first four episodes — as well as the three preceding seasons — there’s no reason to think such a finale is out of reach. And after these initial ending hours, it’s also clear that “Succession” isn’t slowing down.
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The PlaylistMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Speaking of sharp writing, “Succession” remains one of the best shows on TV in terms of dialogue. ... In the end, the members of the Roy family may have no choice but to figure out how to make it on their own. The state of television drama will be a little weaker when they do.
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RogerEbert.comMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
If you weren't already uneasy while watching the first two episodes, episode three is a game-changer, pulling out career-defining performances from all three of the main actors. .... While it's hard to tell what the show will bring to the table from a glimpse at this season, if these four episodes are anything to go by, the show isn't pulling any punches.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
The first four episodes of Succession‘s final season are absolutely magnificent. Armstrong and his writers’ room finally let the metaphoric dominos they’ve been setting up for three seasons fall. The dialogue is as brutally sharp as ever and the ensemble cast pulls out some of their best, most devastating work yet. ... Succession Season 4 isn’t just good. It’s poised to handily sweep the 2023 Emmys.
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ColliderMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
The core of what we find so fascinating about Succession is stronger than ever in Season 4. ... These are episodes that you won't want to miss, with moves that'll have you picking apart the Roy family dynamics week to week and dying to see who'll win the rat race to the top.
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TV Guide MagazineOct 21, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Worth every minute of the excruciating two-year wait between Seasons 2 and 3. ... This is cutthroat corporate theater played at a Shakespearean level, King Lear with a bracing shot of bawdy farce. [25 Oct - 7 Nov 2021, p.8]
Oct 18, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Armstrong and his writers channel gloriously profane prose through each of them, ensuring that even the meanest, Roman, has a trickster's charm about him while the least – that would be Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) – retain their humanity.... [Cox] lights the stage to give viewers a clearer view of his castmates' glow – and they're delivering true excellence in these episodes.
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Oct 15, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Success hasn't spoiled Succession, as the Emmy-winning drama returns with all its Shakespearean and Murdochian overtones intact, with a bruising father-son battle over its fictional media empire. Stripped of that, the HBO series remains enormously fun, filled with cringe-inducing moments and the kind of vicious insults that would make the writers of "Veep" blush.
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Oct 14, 2021
Season 3 Review:
The “Veep” vibe is stronger and sharper, with characters gnarling out insults that seem to turn common obscenities into metrical poetry. ... The scripts are [chef’s kiss]. ... In real life, these ethical crimes are sickening; on “Succession,” they are satire at its most stinging, as power mongers dismiss a possible candidate for his nervous lip-licking tic.
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The TelegraphOct 5, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Each early scene seems to take place either in a dusty boardroom or inside a vehicle, with every second conversation taking place over the phone. That Armstrong and his writers make this the stuff of edge-of-seat intrigue is very impressive indeed. ... Armstrong has also reined in the florid language (though not the swearing), which stops this third series from being a pastiche or a greatest hits package. The writing is still the smartest on TV, however.
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The Daily BeastOct 4, 2021
Season 3 Review:
This is the same Succession you know and love: crude, uncomfortable, deplorable, indulgent, and the kind of smart that is both obnoxious and inspirational. But where season 2 was all about letting that manspread with reckless abandon, now we’re seeing what happens when it’s time to bottle it all up again. ... It’s a truly visceral viewing experience. ... I can’t think of another show for which we’re so excited for new episodes.
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The GuardianOct 4, 2021
Season 3 Review:
The writing – though there is in this particularly plot-heavy, season-setting opener less room for the delicate characterisation that customarily leaven the script and make you wring your hands with their deftness and intelligence – remains immaculate. The performances ... remain unimpeachable.
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The IndependentJan 3, 2020
The GuardianDec 4, 2019
Season 2 Review:
The writing is so creatively foul that it fills the gap left by its sibling in crudeness, Veep. ... Succession is skilled at steadily and surely raising its characters up to multidimensional horrors. ... Its boldest move is to refuse to give these monsters any sort of comeuppance, but that unrelenting bleakness works in its favour and makes it all the more convincing.
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Aug 12, 2019
Season 2 Review:
[Season 2] takes the show to a level of insight and theatricality that rivals anything else on television this year. ... In case it’s unclear: Season 2 is extraordinary. Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, finds new levels of horror to mine in Succession’s autopsy of the ultrarich, but he also finds pathos, which elevates the show even further.
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Aug 6, 2019
Season 2 Review:
The thing to embrace and appreciate with Succession in this second season is just how superbly and seemingly effortlessly structured it is with its grandiose plotting; other than making us care about the Roys, that's the next-level miracle. The Emmys did recognize Succession but not nearly enough, by the way. This series is doing something special and the rich rewards will be coming.
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Mar 24, 2023
Season 4 Review:
I can assure you that through the four episodes of the fourth season provided to critics, it seems better than ever in that particular way of shows whose excellence never wavers; a steadiness that creates in the mind a sense of ascent, so that each part exceeds the previous in perception while the true shape is more of an unending plateau.
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Mar 24, 2023
Season 4 Review:
“Succession” proves particularly engrossing when the series finds new themes to explore and forces the characters to confront new situations as it does in season four. ... Allowing the series to conclude sooner rather than later insures it will likely continue to be regarded as one of the best TV dramas of all time.
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Mar 22, 2023
Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Expectations are high, and based on what I’ve seen of the season so far (four episodes), they will not be dashed. They may be subverted, though. ... At times, still, the show can be too pert and snarky for its own good. ... But that’s a relatively minor critique of what is otherwise satisfying and surprising—based on what I’ve seen, anyway.
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The Daily BeastMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
There’s nothing particularly novel about Succession as it approaches the finish line, yet its stride is strong. ... The entire team is in top form, including Mark Mylod and his fellow directors, whose stewardship (all anxious handheld camerawork and charged snap zooms) is as sharp, rhythmic and volatile as the barb-laden writing.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
While the season takes a bit longer to catch fire than its predecessors, once the shady dealing begins in earnest, “Succession” is more intense than ever. And with the series finale in sight, the show has a full tank of gas and an 800-pound gorilla’s foot on the pedal. Better than ever doing business with you, “Succession.”
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Significant choices are made, by both the characters and the creative team, that cannot be taken back. It is full steam ahead to the end. Much of what happens is shocking and/or shockingly poignant, especially since it is a show about the absolute worst human beings alive. The one aspect that remains unsurprising is how incredibly funny the show is. ... Armstrong and company also continue to demonstrate a marvelously deft balance between the yuks and the tragedy of it all. ... It’s doing absolutely everything it wants to in the here and now.
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Oct 15, 2021Oct 14, 2021Oct 4, 2021
Season 3 Review:
It’s worth the wait. What struck me first as I dove back in was not how thrilling or dramatic this show can be, but how laugh-out-loud funny it is. ... At the same time, though, those family tragedy elements feel rawer and more intense than ever before. ... The politics stuff, definitely. Like you, I don’t think it totally works. ... God, it looks miserable — and God, am I glad to be back, raising a glass once again to the best worst family on TV right now.
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Oct 4, 2021TV Guide MagazineAug 16, 2019
Season 2 Review:
While it's fair to wonder if this is a crown worth inheriting, frequent Shakespearean allusions remind us how timeless is the appeal of these sagas of wealth, raw ambition, power and influence. [19 Aug - 1 Sep 2019, p.12]
Aug 5, 2019
Season 2 Review:
You feel for a Kendall or a Shiv in the way that you might feel for an apex predator in a wildlife documentary that fell off a cliff while chasing prey. You watch the Roys with something akin to scientific fascination. We’re learning about how the monsters live and reproduce and dominate us, generation after generation. They’re up in the hunting towers, and we’re the boars.
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Jun 4, 2018
Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
There was never going to be a “winner” in the battle for the throne, the series has thrilled us with depictions of the extent to which the players lose in their quest. And as we approach the end, the Roy family’s journey toward self-destruction remains a darkly captivating spectacle.
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Oct 4, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Succession continues to be one of the best shows about royal in-fighting on TV. It’s the Wars of the Roses, it’s Machiavelli, it’s the last days of Rome. It’s addictive, but it’s also depressing. Because even in its most grandiose comedic moments, there is truth to Succession’s cynical world that makes us realize yes, these idiots are absolutely in charge of our world and no, there’s not really anything we can do about it.
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IndieWireMay 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
After six episodes, Succession stops feeling like chunks of it are working and starts churning out more and more addictive content. ... So rather than wish for something to be cut down and fit into an old box, delight in watching this witty drama or black comedy grow into something new.
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Mar 31, 2023
Season 4 Review:
The four episodes made available to critics have already delivered on this promise [the propulsive series that I always wanted]. ... The script in these new episodes demands far more of the actors than what we’ve seen in the past. It opens up a more generous palette of feeling and situation.
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Mar 24, 2023Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Daniel Fienberg: I thought the season’s first two episodes were among the show’s weakest ever, which is to say, “Merely very good episodes of TV,” while I thought the two after that were possibly the best hours the show has ever done.
Angie Han: I think I more or less agree. The first couple episodes — and the first episode in particular — feel very much like the table-setting episodes they are, and not among the show’s best table-setting episodes at that. But overall this batch has reminded me, simultaneously, of how sad I’ll be to see this series go, and how happy I am that it’s getting to go out on its own terms with a definitive ending.
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The GuardianMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
Everything we want and need is still here. ... The opening episodes of each season of Succession tend to subsume the family dynamic in the corporate intrigue, because there are always so many pieces not just to set up but to explain to a lay audience. This seems to have opted for a more equal balance.
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The TelegraphMar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
We are no closer to knowing who will inherit the firm than we were at the start. With the end in sight, however, Succession is free to aim for the landing, and those of us who have been wishing the Roys would get a move on will not be disappointed – at least on the evidence of the first four episodes given to reviewers.
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Aug 8, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Despite its gloom, “Succession,” which is up for best drama series at this year’s Emmy Awards, is extremely watchable and about as easy to ignore as a hangnail. In addition to its Didion-esque ability to illuminate the subtle evils along its margins, the show simmers with vile dialogue.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
[Logan's] rude tenacity proves to be his only quality as the season shapes up. The dynamics of the internecine struggle--the squabbles, betrayals, and ad-hoc alliances--are primal in a way that would translate to any ancient clan or provincial enterprise. But the persuasive texture of this portrait of extreme wealth is distinctly contemporary.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
[Succession] is sharply written and expertly played. The characters are individual enough to feel original, however much they may adhere to type, and Armstrong's dialogue, layered and overlapping at times in the manner of Robert Altman, nicely models the way people talk around things, the poker game that is human conversation.
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RogerEbert.comMay 30, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It’s off to a more interesting start than several recent HBO shows (I’m looking at you, “Here and Now”) and the pedigree of the cast and crew should keep the production engaging. We’ve always loved to watch the high and mighty fall in fiction, and seeing the Roys collapse under the weight of their own underhanded machinations should make for an unexpected summer diversion.
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ColliderMay 30, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The joy of seeing them all plot against one another and lay traps and sometimes fall into them themselves often rivals the best machinations of Lannisters, Targaryens, or a Littlefinger. Most of the characters in Succession suffer from a litany of faults: arrogance, greed, ignorance, cowardice, selfishness, delusions of grandeur, but the show has a potent combination of virtues that makes up for these sins.
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Aug 12, 2019
Season 2 Review:
While dark humor and palace intrigue are the cornerstones of Succession, season two develops a sense of lingering melancholy that, while not aimed at making its main characters more sympathetic, imparts a poignancy to the never-ending conflicts within the Roy family.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Succession doesn’t have a tonal problem, necessarily--the comedy and drama mostly complement each other—but rather a fundamental challenge: making some really shitty people the kind you’d want to visit with week after week. The series, then, is best appreciated not as a glimpse into the lives of media moguls and unsavory billionaires, but as a high-stakes family drama, one whose fights, backstabs, and reconciliations have the potential to ripple throughout the world.
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Jun 8, 2018Jun 4, 2018
Season 1 Review:
For the first half of its 10 episodes, Succession struggles to fill space, relying on imaginatively filthy dialogue and increasingly absurd scenarios to pad out the minimal action and character development. Midway through the season, though, the show finds its dramatic footing. It’s a test in patience, but a rewarding one.
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Jun 5, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Any discomfort we feel about enjoying the show means Succession has succeeded, stoking a needling internal (and now external) conversation about the masses’ ideological relationship to the oligarchs pulling levers above our heads. If that is indeed what the show is trying to do, a begrudging hats off to Succession.
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Mar 22, 2023
Season 4 Review:
“Succession” remains a show uninterested (or unable) to offer more than a smirking, surface-level critique of entrenched systems that allow the Roys of the world to barrel over anyone or anything unlucky enough to get in their way. The fourth season doesn’t deviate from that, and if you are a devotee of the show, that’s probably just as well. “Succession” is nothing if not consistent in terms of its level of quality as well as its flaws.
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Oct 14, 2021
Season 3 Review:
This season stalls in the same storylines that the series began with, relying on a top-tier cast—from Matthew Macfadyen as Shiv’s husband to Strong as Logan Roy’s bitch—to make it work. ... Season three doesn’t feel safe as much as it feels conservative—a bit fearful, lacking guts.
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