Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
Succession
This is the most boring, unsurprising answer to the question, “What was the best TV show of 2023?” It also happens to be the truth. Nothing else on TV offered such a rich combination of Shakespearean drama and corporate buffoonery. Nothing else demanded to be analyzed so urgently after it was viewed. Nothing else added so many new phrases to my lexicon (“ludicrously capacious bag,” “terrifyingly moseying,” “Meal fit for a king!”) or convinced me that playing a game called Bitey could be freakishly hot. Nothing else was as engrossing as the 62 minutes spent watching “Connor’s Wedding,” a masterfully shot and acted nuptial celebration that turns tragic in real time.
I mentioned the importance of being Zeitgeisty at the top of this list, and Succession, with bull’s-eye accuracy, tapped into the spirit of 2023, a year when rich megalomaniacs at media companies rose up as cultural supervillains. The process of finally finding out who would succeed the late Logan Roy, a fictional human whose death nevertheless inspired actual obituaries, confirmed all of our worst suspicions about how the wildly wealthy and powerful operate behind closed doors. But unlike in real life, watching their behavior was deeply entertaining, profanely hilarious, and unexpectedly moving. Succession taught us how to see the Roys and individuals of their ilk as full, complicated human beings. To its credit, it also never failed to remind us that they would never, ever show us the same courtesy.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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