
Succession: HBO Plays The Prestige
In magic, a trick is split into three acts: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. This knowledge hit the mainstream in Christopher Nolan’s 2009 thriller, The Prestige, which details Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman’s turn as illusionists who compete in a spirally one-upmanship to achieve total infamy. The Pledge, the first part, is when a magician will show you something relatively ordinary, innocuous. This is followed by The Turn, when this ordinary subject is made extraordinary. And then, The Prestige, when the magician subverts the turn and astonishes further. Like a plain and simple rabbit that suddenly disappears only to reappear at the drop of a hat.
When HBO launched back in the early seventies and, in an effort to maintain consistent subscriptions, it soon began developing its own programming, establishing itself as a new contender in the broadcast television game.
And that was HBO’s Pledge, to make television. Plain and simple. However, when the broadcaster released The Soprano’s in 1999 and The Wire shortly after, in 2002, HBO astonished audiences with the reveal of its Turn. HBO was making ordinary television something extraordinary.
With that hand, The Golden Era of television was launched to salivating audiences, hungrily devouring all they offered like True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, and Game of Thrones. Other channels tossed their hat in the ring too: AMC with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, FX with The Americans, and NBC with The West Wing. Even British programmers were suddenly infatuated with the notion, with the arrival of Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror. Yet, as the advent of streamers oversaturated the market with their expensive, a-list starring turns at television, it seemed as though The Golden Era, and HBO’s marvellous magic trick along with it, staggered out of favour along with the anticlimactic demise of Game of Thrones.
That said, there were remnants of this era that persisted, some sort of coda to the original shimmering glory; The White Lotus, Mare of Easttown, and Lovecraft Country to name a few. Yet, as critically acclaimed they may have been, none truly encapsulated the sensationalism of those true Golden Era shows. Nothing, it seemed, could grip the world in the same way that they had. And then HBO, under the guidance of Jesse Armstrong and Mark Myloyd, has finally played its Prestige.

Succession was a slow burn in the realm of cultural zeitgeist. The first season arrived with little fanfare, and the second only slightly more so. However, when the third season premiered in 2021, momentum had ignited and now, as the fourth season rattles around TV boxes worldwide, Succession has become the biggest show on air. But why? What is it about a family of reviled millionaires clambering for the crown of their ailing father’s media business that has us all so intoxicated?
It’s good storytelling. Plain and simple. HBO’s eternal promise. Succession is the unique type of show that doesn’t overly complicate it’s plot with a needless hankerings for dramatic events, it allows the characters to breathe, to become themselves and establish their roles on the chessboard of the Roy dynasty. Business chatter isn’t translated for the ‘common folk’ who watch, instead it’s said with a trust in the intelligence of its audience, and in the delivery of its cast that evoke every necessary emotion around the corporate jargon that even if you don’t understand the technicalities, you do understand the consequences. Tension is built around relationships and interactions, not extraneous events, and it solely relies on the strength of character to do so. This is why the final season is so outrageously riveting – this is the endgame, this is the culmination, this is what everything has been for, and, ultimately, each part of it feels earned.

What’s more is the artistry behind the style of it. Filmed on 35mm on location in New York, Succession has remained firmly focused on presenting its characters in photo-reality. The actors aren’t tucked away in some studio lot, with wooden fascias of skyscrapers setting the scene, no, they’re present in the world the characters live in. They’re captured on grainy rolls of film that allow the audience to know, wholeheartedly, this is not a glossy, clean retelling of someone else’s story.
Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, as this excellent show bows out, that the final scene of the final act of HBO’s greatest achievement is a dog-eat-dog contest to take over a company that neither of the contenders actually seem to like. A group of deplorable individuals that, through well-articulated nuances, have managed to redeem themselves that audiences root for at least one of them. What becomes of the formidable Waystar Royco when the final credits toll? Will it sink into oblivion or re-invent itself to acclaim? Does anyone actually even care? And is that not, with streaming wars and mergers and mass layoffs, the final state of television itself?
The final season of Succession is currently airing on Sky Atlantic
Words: Beth Bennett
Imagery courtesy of HBO