Episode two of the final series of HBO’s brilliant Succession , and Peter Fincham is finding it just a tiny bit boring

Is it just me? Everyone agrees that Succession is one of television’s crowning achievements. Originally conceived as a one-off drama about the Murdochs, it’s a perfect example of how fiction is more illuminating than fact. Yes, Logan Roy and his ill-begotten offspring may seem to be modelled on their real-life equivalents, but the great thing about Succession is that it can go wherever Jesse Armstrong and his team of writers want to take it. Lawyers don’t need to pore over the scripts saying, “Did this actually happen?” There’s no caption at the top saying, “We based this on real events but we’ve made a few things up.”

(There are as many variations on the “don’t sue us” warning as there are factually based dramas these days, but my favourite remains the disclaimer in Fargo – “This is a true story… At the request of the survivors the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” Fargo is of course entirely fictional.)

Succession’s strengths are its dazzling dialogue, perfectly observed family dynamics, and its pin-sharp observation of the hollow misery that accompanies great wealth. Appalling as the Roy family are, we want to spend more time with them. This is partly down to casting – there’s not a single role which you could imagine another actor playing better. This is a double-edged sword for the actors themselves – now that the series has ended, they now mostly face a lifetime of reading scripts and thinking, yes, but is this as good as Succession? And won’t people just think, hang on a minute, that’s Kendall/Shiv/Roman. Or Tom. Or Greg. Or all the other fully realised, beautifully nuanced characters. That’s the price of great success for actors – it can trap you like a butterfly. Remember Jesse from Breaking Bad? Every now and then the actor who played him pops up in something on Netflix, trying to convince us he isn’t still Jesse. It never quite works.

At the time of writing we’re two episodes into the final season, so we’ve got eight more hours to tie up the various threads and reach a satisfactory conclusion.

But. It’s at this point that I’m afraid I’m starting to get frustrated with it. Here’s why. Succession is about a family, and it’s about business. But business is boring! I really don’t care whether somebody else buys Logan out, or the kids beat him to the deal, or whether they get $100 million between them, or get screwed completely. There was a scene in the first episode of the new season in which the different family factions outbid each other to buy an ailing media empire run by the brilliantly named Nan Pierce. Did I believe it for a minute? Not really. We’ve been here before – in previous seasons we had a super-rich eccentric played by the wonderful Adrien Brody trying to buy out Logan, and essentially the same story a few episodes later with Alexander Skarsgård.

I might have got the details wrong, but that’s the point – they don’t stay with you. The details of high-level business deals are usually left to lawyers for a reason. What I want to see is raw family tragedy – one or more, or of all of them, getting their comeuppance. If the cops are involved, that’s fine by me.

The threads have been there all along, but some have been left dangling. At the end of the first season, Kendall Roy was responsible for a man’s death – remember that? The car in the lake at the party? A stunning sequence. I want to hear more about it! In the second season, the FBI turned up and raided the Waystar Royco offices. We were expecting (hoping?) to see the entire family led away in hand cuffs, but it didn’t happen.

Another dog that didn’t bark has been Logan Roy’s health. At the beginning of the first season he suffered a debilitating stroke and couldn’t even hold a cup of coffee. Whatever happened to that? He’s been in pretty good fettle since (though the theme of his health was brilliantly highlighted in the Adrien Brody episode, one of my favourites.)

There’s been much talk about Armstrong’s decision to end Succession after four seasons. A wise one, I think. It would be such a shame if it started going round in circles.

If you’re not a fan of Succession you’ll wonder what all this is about. I’m a huge fan, and it’s an extraordinary achievement by Jesse Armstrong and his collaborators (including, by the way, 14 executive producers – I counted). In every episode there are countless incidental pleasures – most recently an excruciating scene in which the hapless Greg tries to explain to Logan’s hard-as-nails assistant Kerry that her audition to be a TV anchor wasn’t being met with universal acclaim; and a touching moment in which Connor is reunited with his wayward fiancée Willa in a featureless hotel room.

The latter was one of those moments where genuine feelings burst through the glittering surface. In that sense Succession is like a Restoration comedy – the characters are sharp, witty, venal, monstrous – but they’re rarely capable of real emotion.

As we enter the final stretch, I’d like to see more than family squabbling and the ins-and-outs of business deals. It would be good to see the Feds again. Hopefully they’re on their way but whatever, I’ll be there.

Peter Fincham is co-founder of Expectation TV. Previously he was Managing Director of Talkback, Controller of BBC One and Director of Television at ITV. The above was written after episode two had aired, but before episode three.

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