Succession

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.

Going out with a bang. ... The blue-chip Succession is especially strong, as hilariously vicious as ever, with the Roy media family imploding amid a flurry of betrayals, back-channel deal-making, and cruel manipulations. [10 - 23 Apr 2023, p.6]

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.

"Succession" is going out with a bang, but — at least in the early episodes — a resigned one.

Based on the four episodes available for review, the show’s last chapter will be as brilliantly sarcastic, as strategically plotted, and as crammed with betrayals and patricidal urges as we’ve come to expect from this TV monument of dark wit.

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.

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.

“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.

Your jaw will be on the floor after watching this final season. If the standard of the first four episodes is sustained, it’s surely in contention to be counted among TV’s greatest achievements.

With this injection of interpersonal empathy, Succession manages to guarantee its place in the history of television.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

The barbs sting as sharply as ever, while the drama escalates to the level one expects from not just a final season, but a final season of a show like this, one which has grown past its shaky early episodes to stand amongst the best series of the 21st century.

Very important things happen, none of which would be right to spoil, but it's fair to say these events inform and propel the family's interactions in ways we have not seen before.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

It means that history always repeats itself, and that Succession has done a great job finding the humanity within these wretched people.

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.

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.

This series is smart, and it knows what it is. If it remains narrowly and unapologetically focused on the callow miseries of its billionaires, it is finally, after spinning its wheels for several seasons, ready to push its premise to the breaking point.

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.

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.

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.