Sucked into a seductive Succession

Can someone explain to me why Jesse Armstrongs phenomenally fun fabulously feisty 10part web series Succession available on Hotstar is not talked about in smashing terms Or for that matter talked about at all The series dropped in 2018 The trailer for the second season expected to air in August came out this weekend This gives you enough time to catch upIs the lack of general brouhaha over this politicalfamily drama full of intrigues mockirony and manoeuvrings of a highprofile succession battle within a massive media conglomerate explained by the fact that its an HBO show Yup HBO which indisputably heralded the rebirth of modern longform slickly produced television with The Sopranos back in 1999 and continues to remain the goldstandard for quality contentYet the minidemography that surrounds me by now swears by Netflix alone chiefly for the fact that they introduced bingewatchingdropping episodes of a series all at once The first audience of Succession wouldve caught an episode a weekan appointment viewing that sort of dulls the impact of a show stretched over two and half months Unless youre on the eighth season of HBOs Game Of Thronesplanning the nth houseparty for the next episodeI make this distinction between network television and an OTT platform because rapid changes taking place in media consumption are also at the heart of what Succession surveys As is likely for any legacymainstream media empire the top management is split between the practical old guard that would rather bet on where the money already is local cable etc rather than bleed for now but potentially reap benefits of an uncertain future by investing in the Internet Because who watches TVFor all its focus on churns within one global media house with stake in news movies amusement parks the works Succession could be a story of the battle of succession in any field anywhere in the world In an early episode the grand patriarch Logan Roy the brilliant Brian Cox who founded and gradually grew the gigantic empire is battling for life While his kith and kin are overtly disturbed the undercurrent flows more around who takes over even if temporarily since stocks are at stakeThis is quite similar to say Nagesh Kukunoors series City Of Dreams that dropped on Hotstar this weekend set within Maharashtra politics The Godfather is of course still the trilogy that any film on a multigenerational family firm would be benchmarked againstThat said its hard to exceed the machinations of Mahabharat that Shyam Benegal did a fine job of smartly lifting and placing between two rival business houses with Kalyug in the 80sFor inspirationadaptation the makers of Succession look no further than the cutthroat AussieturnedAmerican media mogul Rupert Murdoch 88 As his estranged brother calls him Logan Roy is an exScot exCanadian exhuman being Murdochs own family pretty much mirrors Roys with children from multiple marriages the last wife Jerry Hall naturally at the top of the pyramid but outside the stakes gameAlso Murdoch as a selfmade media baron deeply entrenched in American right wing politics is a fascinating case study himself The show doesnt delve much or at all into the rise and fall of Logan and by association Murdoch in public lifenamely phonehacking and briberycorruption scandals at the turn of the decadeIn fact it doesnt go deeper into the media industry itself and that couldve significantly lifted this narrative to another level What the show does though is sink its teeth into the insecurities of a pothead generation that would follow a banyan tree like Roy or his inspiration Murdoch if you mayThe character sketches for the young adult children with most stakes in the succession war played stunningly by Kieran Culkin Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook are sumptuously packed with subtext The plot equally unsubtly examines the insideroutsider phenomenon quite natural in an environment driven by privileges that you enjoy given your proximity to power alone access being the only currency that countsAnd no this not about the money Never is is it For the lay viewer this sort of voyeuristic entertainment serves as an expose on unvarnished truths about a frighteningly ambitious pretentiously polite society that in fact comprises the mostly beastly lot still commanding respect though because no one openly resorts to physical violence to get what they crave But thats just the moral underpinning confirming our worst suspicions of course Not the point of why we secretly admire such a show Think Martin Scorseses Wolf Of Wall Street 2013 Sure Jordan Belfort Leonardo DiCaprio had a horrible end But we loved the film because of the incredible highlife that money could buy sex drugs rocknroll It was firstly a fantasy flick for a deprived manchildAmong the things I learnt from Succession was this prohibitively expensive almost illegal classified dish called Catalinasteamed foot of a songbird that you pretty much inhale and swallow while covering your face with a napkin Nope not going to try that But kahan milega aisa contentMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates