Culture Crash: The Return of HBO’s Hit Show Succession

The time has come for the return of HBO’s financial family drama, Succession.

Succession is sort of like This Is Us meets Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, as it tells the story of the Roy family and the family’s media conglomerate. The show centers on the family’s plans for leadership of its company as the father, and the company’s founder, CEO and Chairman Logan, turns 80 years old. What begins as an easy-to-follow plan of succession, under which son Kendall would take over quickly breaks into chaos as Logan refuses to give up the company and his children begin plotting how they can end up in control of the empire.

Succession tells a greasy tale of power-hungry narcissists backstabbing their own family members which, admittedly, sounds like a bit of a nightmare. But the show is actually pretty enthralling. Politicians try to influence media coverage, siblings angle to top each other in gaining their father’s affections, and a brother-in-law-to-be is tasked with heading a troubled department full of corruption and payoffs.

The show’s central family has drawn comparisons to the real-life Murdoch’s, and the Shakespearean tragedy-like story of the Roy family plays like a current-day, reality-based version of Game of Thrones with votes of no-confidence and hush-hush meetings in a glass-paneled office building taking the place of sword fights and battlefield combat.

While this is one of those shows that takes a few episodes to really get the ball rolling, once the plot gets cooking, you won’t be able to help yourself from taking sides.

Succession‘s first season is now streaming on HBO Go and HBO Now. Succession‘s second season premieres August 11 on HBO.

I’m Evan Rook.