When my mum came round to my flat a few days after I got discharged from the hospital, she took in my living room, saw the massive tv I inherited off a former flatmate’s dad and asked “Is it broken?” because it wasn’t on. We watch tv as a family; it is on constantly and provides a sharp contrast to many of the homes of my friends I went to school and university with. Historically, I have watched a fair amount of the stuff too.
So…why haven’t I covered any TV meaningfully in this year’s incomplete and personal cultural roundup of the year? Basically I’m really, really behind. Taking a look at the Guardian’s top 50 (they are up to their number 3, Happy Valley with Succession and The Bear clearly fighting it out for the top spot), this year I have watched three shows or series that made the list. The Russell Brand documentary, In Plain Sight, which provided a somewhat more mainstream entry to the topic of the man’s pattern of abuse and a broader culture’s tolerance of it from men who wore skinny jeans and eyeliner when I was a teenager than the excellent, if gutting article from The Times and The Sunday Times. Succession, whose key phrases I can unmute on twitter now, though it has been quite fun to have missed a decent amount of ‘Roman’ Empire jokes and The Sixth Commandment, a standalone miniseries on iPlayer featuring Timothy Spall as the unfortunate victim of a very cunning player indeed.
I am familiar with lots on the list, but haven’t got round to watching the later series of a few: Happy Valley, Starstruck, Boiling Point if we consider the film, Mrs Maisel. Some I want to watch: Dreaming Whilst Black, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, Ghosts; I am pretty sure I’m not going to catch Lessons in Chemistry though.
Maintaining quality throughout serialisation is really hard, and so I understand my desire this year to rewatch series rather than explore new ones. But there’s also a part of me that delays listening to follow-up albums from artists I like, such as Sampha, for fear of a let down — this is the case for Rose Matafeo’s show, which I left at the end of series 1 when it aired and have yet to pick it back up again, despite my interest in that kind of romantic comedy/slice of life stuff. Mrs Maisel fell off for me pretty early on and there’s four-and-a-half? of good, and long, seasons of Gilmore Girls to be had instead, which is what I did while recovering from surgery this autumn.
Really though, it’s the length of the thing. I’ve benefitted from my MubiGo subscription a fair amount this year, and with a wonky attention span, the act of going to the cinema ensures that I will see a thing through. How likely would I have been to finish The Power of the Dog or Killers of the Flower Moon if I watched them from home? It might be time to test out my powers of concentration, and not second or third-screening with The Irishman when I have the house to myself next week.
Also: I like to watch tv which means doing it while cooking or god, forbid, on a tiny screen on my commute currently doesn’t appeal, though I get why other people do it. It’s where audio and podcasts kick in for me.
I am noticing that I am nervous to talk about Succession! What is that about? Almost everything I have written about so far this year, and will throughout the course of this week, has been done to death; I am adding more words and analysis to some pretty healthy bonfires. And yet, I don’t have that much to say about it, perhaps because all the power rankings and the quoting and ‘which brother gets the crown [Emmy]’ and the fatigue and disappointment the show lent legitimacy to the Red Scare podcast chick and Ziwe…I think cumulatively they all sucked out the room for me to contribute. That said. There’s so much to say. The claustrophobic tracking on that damn boat while they’re waiting for their father to die, Shiv’s little “Oh, I can’t have that” whimper which put in mind pregnancy right away, the gratitude I have that the show gave Alan Ruck so much screentime and such a perfect role.
But let’s take it back to one moment in the script. The tenderness and righteous damnation of Ewan Roy in his eulogy to his brother was towering and immediately put in mind Glenda Jackson’s words in Parliament upon the death of Margaret Thatcher.
Consider Ewan on Logan:
He was a man who has here and there drawn in the edges of the world. Now and then darkened the skies a little. Closed men’s hearts. Fed that dark flame in men, the hard mean hard-relenting flame that keeps their heart warm while another grows cold. Their grain stashed while another goes hungry.
And then Glenda on Margaret:
As a friend of mine said, during her era, London became a city that Hogarth would have recognised—and, indeed, he would. In coming to the basis of Thatcherism, I come to the spiritual part of what I regard as the desperately wrong track down which Thatcherism took this country. We were told that everything I had been taught to regard as a vice—and I still regard them as vices—was, in fact, under Thatcherism, a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees, all these were the way forward.
Because, while it can be read as a being about the trauma contained within prestige, ultimately, I think Succession is a story about the sharp elbows developed in the 20th century, reaching their hideous powers in an age where the greed is palpable, but a little less flashy than that of the 80s. Boars on the floor.