Succession

I did like the show, but I will mostly be critical here because it’s already received its fair share of praise. I enjoyed it mostly for the comedy. “You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs” is an all-time great line.

Where it’s lacking for me is specificity about the actual business. What is it like to run a TV station? How do they manage the logistics of a cruise ship? What kinds of numbers need to be crunched during a merger? We get glimpses of these things, but I guess my expectation for a workspace drama is: I want to see the work. I’m thinking of a show like Mad Men, where you can really tell the difference between a successful ad and a failed one. More recently, The Bear spends a lot of time on showing the characters through their abilities in the kitchen.

In Succession, it all feels kind of vague and hand-wavey, with the details obscured by (admittedly clever) one-liners. To be fair, the focus is on how the characters angle for power, but the show would have been more enjoyable for me had the actual ins and outs of the business been more clear.