A show about fake ultrarich people played by less rich people watched by poor people. A show that has pretensions about flagellating the rich while still somehow revelling in their debauchery and parasitism, a sort of recursive self-awareness that is supposed to somehow absolve the characters (and the irl rich?). Somehow it is both the sale of anti capitalism back to the anti capitalists whilst also scratching a Keeping Up With the Kardashians itch for watching the inter-familial spats of our feudal overlords.
A contemporary Game of Thrones where everyone is bad and there is no good and it’s just a TV show so it doesn’t matter, which handily conceals the fact that our everyday reality is literally this show, and that the stakes in real life are actually weighty and have moral and material value and can easily be viewed as right and wrong.
Along with a healthy dose of “their daddy was mean to them so it’s not their fault they’re all disgusting bourgeois pigs”.
What the fuck. We desperately need prolekult. I’m so sick of this two faced culture that sells our own hatred back to us and pokes the reward centres in our brain - “hey you just watched a pithy comment that could KIND SORTA be construed as anti capitalist on a million dollar show on a billion dollar network, you’ve done your leftism for the day!”
What stage of capitalism is it when everyone is so widely aware capitalism sucks that the most successful business model is pretending you agree that capitalism sucks?
AAAAAA
This is not uncommon for Iannuchian characters though, everyone vile and completely self-interested. Do you like Veep or The Thick of It? My mother has a similar objection to all three shows. No likability anywhere
Strangely I do quite like The Thick of It and Veep (although I haven't seen as much of Veep tbh), as well as other shows about rich arseholes like Mad Men, I just felt that Succession's characters weren't engaging (or funny) enough to hold my interest, I suppose.
They are definitely less funny, and its just not enough of a comedy overall I think, too trapped in prestige-y drama to fit with those others.