Thanks so much Adam for taking the time to provide me with such a thoughtful and articulate response. I have asked the same question in several other places on the internet, and have only gotten some form of “if you don’t like this show your an idiot!” I guess that’s why, in a nutshell, I have enjoyed this group for so long.
It’s interesting that many of the things you identified about your context I would second. I loved The Thick of It, and Veep of course, and can’t get enough of Carey Grant or Katharine Hepburn rapid firing delicious wise crack filled dialogue. While the Roys and the real life people they represent are horrible, they are somewhat less horrible than the killers, psychopaths and human traffickers in the Sopranos. I guess I just don’t hear the high quality dialog in Succession - instead I hear dialogue that wants to be classic and smart, but, for me, isn’t terribly. It’s not that I have to like the characters in a show, but I do have to care what happens to them, and I find I just don’t give a damn whether Ivanka or Eric or Don Jr wins this weeks power struggle, and I don’t care about their spouses or their cousins or the horse they rode in on. I am interested in media as well, but I don’t count what Murdoch does as actual media. I don’t hate the show; I’ve seen every episode, and enjoyed some significantly, and most at least a little. But not only would I not nominate it as one of the best shows of the year, I would not put it on my list of the top 25 of the 21st century. It is odd for me though, because it feels like a show that is being aimed at me. A lot of my friends and family members, who have similar tastes in popular entertainment as I do, LOVE the show, and want to do long water cooler deep dives into it with me in chats and tweets the next day, and mostly I can’t be bothered to do much more than grouse about how much I dislike having to be around those people for another hour. On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 at 4:00 PM Adam Bowie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 10:11 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Can you at all out into words what it is you like about spending time >> with them? I keep wondering if I am just looking at it the wrong way. I >> just detest the people, and am not charmed by the snappy dialogue- and >> particularly do not find Roman funny or endearing. >> >> > Objectively, they are all awful people. But that's not what I'm always > looking for from a show. You're not supposed to like these characters. But > you are supposed to believe in them. And they're drawn richly enough that I > do. Indeed what this show is brilliant at is making me interested in these > otherwise terrible people. That's hard to do. Sure, we've had anti-heroes > forever. It's even become a bit of a TV cliché - from Tony Soprano to Vic > Mackey in The Shield to Walter White in Breaking Bad. But those shows are > about us kinda liking the bad boys. This is something different. > > Strangely, these feel as real a bunch of TV characters that I can think of > in any show ever. That comes through in the writing and the top-notch > performances. There are awkward silences; there are bits of dialogue that > are incoherent and don't feel as though a writer has written them (although > for the most part, they very much have). Literally every character feels > properly fleshed out, and not just a means to an end. And the show > repeatedly leaves massive gaps in telling us exactly what's going on. We > have to work to keep up - it doesn't hold our hands. and you just don't get > exposition dialogue lazily dumped on us. We're treated like adults. It's a > show that you absolutely cannot be scrolling through your phone while you > watch it - not if you want to fully appreciate it anyway. > > Part of my love of Succession is certainly the sphere they operate in. > Media has become so dominant in recent years, and I have always been > obsessed with it. Here's a fictional company that has at its heart a Fox > News-alike channel that from their perspective is just a means to an end to > make money. And the characters know it intrinsically, but just don't care. > On this week's episode, one of the throwaway lines spoke of turning on the > "bigot spigot" when referencing their news channel, and their happiness in > getting into bed with extreme right wingers. Sadly, it's vastly more > authentic than, say, ACN in Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom - a show that > itself could have been designed perfectly for me. Literally just this week, > Fox News has lost Chris Wallace, coming just a couple of weeks after their > streaming sibling turned up the "bigot spigot" to the max with Tucker > Carlson's "documentary." > > Another reason for me loving the show is that you can follow a pretty > clear through narrative from the British show, The Thick of It (from which > the movie In the Loop, was a spin-off), through Veep and then finally to > Succession. Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession, worked as a writer on > the previous two shows, both created by the peerless Armando Ianucci. While > the former two are easily classifiable as comedies, I'm not sure exactly > where I'd place Succession, and it's probably reductive to attempt to > define it clearly as a "drama" or a "comedy." It's definitely not a > "comedy-drama" either. But it does have much more humour - and frankly, > more laugh out loud moments, for me anyway, than most "comedies" I watch on > TV. But Malcolm Tucker on The Thick of It and Selena Myers in Veep were > pretty obnoxious too. I lapped them up. > > I suppose I can sit at arm's length from these characters and be > enormously superior about their incestuous behaviours, and yet there's the > dawning realisation that this really isn't that far removed from reality. > It's going to be interesting to see Adam McKay's new movie, Don't Look Up, > which from reviews, seems to be covering related ground, in perhaps a more > slapstick manner. > > On another level entirely, one of my favourite film genres is the > screwball comedy - especially those of the 30s and 40s. Howard Hawks' > Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday are comfortably inside my top ten > films of all time. Now what Succession doesn't have, which are essential > ingredients in a screwball is a love story at the heart of them. Characters > have relationships in Succession, but there's little in the way of love. > However, both have lines delivered at 100 miles an hour, with lines that > pass by so fast that you almost have to re-watch them to catch them. > > One final note on the Jeremy Strong thing - I thought this piece by The > Guardian's Hadley Freeman, who herself interviewed Strong ahead of the > start of this season, was very fair, and on the money - > https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/10/madness-in-their-method-have-we-fallen-out-of-love-with-actorly-excess > > > Adam > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGD4YBDFRQNjMT%3DYHnea5RF580q0NHB2OpFT_bevJ0YBQA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGD4YBDFRQNjMT%3DYHnea5RF580q0NHB2OpFT_bevJ0YBQA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. 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