4 Mondays, March 24 to April 14, 6:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Instructor: Paul Wright, Ph.D., Main Line Classical Academy
Jesse Armstrong’s Succession (2018-23) recalls the opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Succession is a postmodern tale of such a discontented clan, featuring media tycoon Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and a swarm of would-be heirs one-upping each other in a desperate race to the bottom. The stakes include not merely a vast fortune, but also the fate of a multimedia empire that shapes the destinies of nations.
Where The Godfather was marked by the tragic grandeur of an aging father’s worry over his patrimony, Succession instead leans into the absurdity of a malicious patriarch dangling the prospect of an inherited empire to adult children for whom he has no respect. Continually reminding his children that they “are not serious people,” Logan is modeled in part on Rupert Murdoch, whose own inheritance drama is playing out even now behind the doors of a Nevada courtroom. Armstrong couches the clumsy Machiavellianism of the Roy brood in our age of 24-hour news cycles and pernicious social media, suggesting greater stakes than a mere squabble over money.
With Emmy-winning turns by Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, and Matthew Macfadyen, Succession elevates what might have been mere soap opera to the stuff of satiric legend, putting the show firmly among television’s finest dramas—and its funniest comedies.
$100 for members, $140 for non-members
Schedule