It’s been nearly 150 years since Leo Tolstoy penned the opening words to “Anna Karenina,” “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and the more things change, the more things stay the same.While the drama unraveling on HBO’s Emmy Award-winning drama “Succession” isn’t quite on the scale of a Russian literary epic, it’s not far off.
The progeny of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) are forever in conflict, both with each other and their father, jockeying for position and cutting each other off at the knees, in the hopes of landing control of the family’s global media empire (and/or a kiss from daddy.)In fact, the Roy family’s particular flavor of unhappiness might have a lot more to do with that latter point than the former, at least as far as show creator Jesse Armstrong is concerned.
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