Family troubles

There is a bunch of secondary characters who help make this show sound like Game of Thrones for the C-suite, writes J Jagannath

Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote in the second volume of his addictive My Struggle series that there needs to be always more kids than parents in a household. He says this always keeps the family dynamics interesting. This dictum works even better for books and cinema. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories, Jill Soloway’s Transparent are a few examples that are dear to me.

Succession, a new HBO show, milks these so-called dynamics to the hilt and the result is a gripping drama with immaculate scenes. It’s about Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the megalomaniac