CHRISTOPHER STEVENS gives Succession a glowing FIVE-STAR review 

Succession

Classification:

Warning: This review contains very strong language from the beginning and throughout.

Or at least it would be if it cited every scintillating, stinging, hilariously lurid insult and overreaction from the opening episode of Succession (Sky Atlantic), which returns for its final season.

A full transcript would require so many asterisks and hyphens that this page would look like the screen of a 1980s Space Invaders machine.

The rudest drama ever aired definitively refutes the age-old jibe that foul language is the last resort for the uneducated and unimaginative.

Jesse Armstrong, the writer of Succession, uses the Anglo-Saxon language with countless inventions. Hearing the F-word used in such enthusiastic variation requires a real intellectual effort, just to keep up.

So does Logan Roy (Brian Cox), with furious aggression and menace. His oath leaves the subordinates bruised and breathless.

When a business fell apart, at the end of a moody birthday party, he gathered his lieutenants around him and invited them to berate him, like a drunk in a pub urging strangers to beat him up.

When they reluctantly complied, Logan hit them with sewer curses.

Then there’s the way Logan’s youngest son Roman (Kieran Culkin) swears, with disturbing sexual undertones. When he uses the language of self-abuse and nonconsensual aggression, he means it literally.

A whole PhD is waiting to be written on the Oath of Succession, but whoever tackles it will need a deep understanding of Freudian psychology. . . because every damn line of dialogue reflects the deep desire of Logan’s adult children to see him dead.

Daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook) understands this best. He wouldn’t make a good torturer, she mused. He doesn’t have patience.

As the credits rolled, Roman, Shiv, and their older brother Kendall (Jeremy Strong) had just bid $10 billion for a failing media conglomerate, solely to spite their father.

They knew this was far more than the company was worth, enough to bankrupt it three times, but they couldn’t help it.

“Congratulations on saying the biggest number,” Logan growled on the other end of the phone. We left him slumped in an armchair, drinking whiskey and watching the news channel he owns, hating everything and everyone.

He behaved strangely all night, leaving his party for dinner at a Central Park restaurant with his bodyguard Colin and talking about the afterlife. Logan doesn’t believe in one, of course.

What could come next, when he has made life hell for himself and his entire family?

For Shiv and her downtrodden husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), what follows seems like a divorce neither wants.

However, it would be a mistake to underestimate how much misery Tom can absorb. Shiv may run out of cruel things to say. . . Or maybe, as he hinted at a tender hand-holding moment between them, he’ll stop wanting to say them.

However, Tom has another side. His bullying of cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is hypnotically pathetic.

When Greg bragged that he had sex with his date in one of Logan’s rooms, Tom convinced him that the entire sordid episode had been caught on security cameras. ‘You accidentally made a sex tape of her,’ he smiled.

The fact that Tom consistently behaves this way and yet Macfadyen remains everyone’s favorite actor is practically supernatural.

Succession has always used its locations wisely. Entire episodes have been set on yachts, in private jets, anywhere the ultra-rich go for privacy, like Bavarian castles or desert hideouts.

This time, we went back to the setting of the debut episode, from 2018: a birthday party at Logan’s apartment in New York. In that first parade, the tycoon was preparing to name one of his children as his successor, but he did not dare to do so. Instead, he had a stroke in a helicopter. . . and woke up worse than ever.

Surely it’s no coincidence to see that scene on repeat. Logan no longer talks about a successor, it’s true. They have all betrayed him. ‘I’m 100 feet tall,’ he raged. These people are pygmies.

Even his manipulative and conniving wife Marcia is gone. She is in Milan, shopping. Forever,” says her PA, Kerry (Zoe Winters), a woman in a Claudia Winkleman wig, who calls herself her “friend/assistant/adviser.”

But Logan is back where he was before the stroke, and he’s talking about death as he wobbles like a corpse on roller skates. Was he really about to die?

For five years, watching Succession has been like looking at a kaleidoscope, where all the spooky pieces tumble around each other, in ever-changing patterns. It’s always different, but nothing really changes: Logan is always at the center.

Perhaps this time, something radical is about to change. If Logan dies, Succession will finally fulfill the promise of his title and it will escalate into a civil war between the uncivil brothers.

The most vicious family drama ever seen on TV could be about to get even more exciting and nasty.