Succession and the rise of ‘eat the rich’ entertainment

Farces, satires and straight slapstick comedies about extremely wealthy people have made popular entertainment for centuries. In film, the most notable example is Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), in which a group of upper-middle-class French people gather at swanky events, culminating in an affair that ends in a mistaken identity shotgun death, one that will be reported to the police as ‘nothing more than an unfortunate accident’.

HBO’s Succession, which returns to Sky Atlantic with a fourth season on Monday, has followed an even wealthier group of people, even more self-absorbed, distorted and cut off from the outside world than Renoir’s overzealous swingers and servants whistling past the future graveyards of Vichy. Jesse Armstrong has created an iconic family with the Roys: Brian Cox’s Logan, the dying lion; Jeremy Strong’s Kendall, the heir apparent who just can’t cut it; Sarah Snook’s Shiv, defter than her brother Kendall; Kieran Culkin’s Roman, the cocky baby brother with zero ambition; and the eldest child, Alan Ruck’s Connor, whose irrelevance to the family business is made clear without any real exposition.