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By coincidence, two extremely popular television series concluded their runs within a few days of each other in late May. “Succession,” HBO’s King-Lear-riffing tale of family dysfunction aired its last episode on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and on the following Wednesday, Apple TV+ gave us the conclusion of “Ted Lasso,” a show so warm and lovable that even the characters on “Succession” might have embraced it. Aside from the happenstance convergence of their conclusion dates, the only thing these two series had in common was that Harriet Walter played an eccentrically self-absorbed mother in both. “Succession,” mordant and nasty, derived its dark humor from the unfettered depths to which the characters would sink in order to advance their interests. “Ted Lasso,” by contrast, celebrated redemption and the astonishing contagion of the abundant goodness in human beings.
Spoilers are going to abound in the following paragraphs. I’ve warned you.
The single most pervasive atmospheric quality of “Succession” is gloom. To begin with, its palette for sets and costumes is overwhelmingly gray. Much of the action takes place indoors, with characters in dark suits or neutral clothes. The interior living spaces are grand, of course, as we would expect for those with access to billions of dollars, but the offices and apartments tend to emphasize the gray, the taupe, the greige. When characters travel by car or helicopter or plane, color remains muted. Lighting at parties is dim. If a scene does take place outdoors, the sky is overcast or the scenery drab. Even onboard a yacht surrounded by glittering sea, nobody enjoys the glory of nature or the elegance of their vessel. “Succession” tamps down brightness and color and cheer. The characters are so busy scheming or trying to guess what someone else is scheming that they have no time for beauty or happiness.
So from whence springs the pleasure of watching “Succession”? Primarily from pitch-perfect performances from actors impeccably matched to their roles. (Jesse Armstrong, the creator and chief writer for the show, alternates his dialogue between unfinished, Mamet-esque fragments and eloquently zinging barbs, all of which usually include one or more of the principal parts of the verb to fuck.) Brian Cox (Logan Roy, the gruff family patriarch), Alan Ruck (Connor Roy, a dimwitted dilettante), Jeremy Strong (Kendall Roy, a preening doofus who is forever striving to be cool and important), Kieran Culkin (Roman Roy, a cynical man-child psychologically stuck in early adolescence), Sarah Snook (Siobhan Roy, often called by her appropriate nickname reminiscent of homemade prison weaponry, Shiv), Matthew Macfadyen (Shiv’s fawning husband Tom Wambsgans, constantly scrambling for security within the company and the family), and Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg, a desperate, money-hungry leech whose moral compass spins like a helicopter blade) collaborate with the huge, equally talented supporting cast to provide delicious heaps of schadenfreude for the ravenous audience to feast upon. Sure, they are obscenely wealthy, we muse, but they are also obscene, and obscenely unhappy.
In glorious contrast, “Ted Lasso” arises from and generates joy. The final season begins with a closeup of Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso and ends with another such shot. What happens in between is an ever-increasing delight. As the season progresses, and we viewers become more and more committed to the plot, the writers take more and more risks, all of which pay off. I will guess that the longest argument in the writers’ room involved whether or not to go with “So Long, Farewell” performed by the football club to say farewell to Ted Lasso. But, as the winners of the argument must have known, by then we viewers would accept anything they offered. Special kudos to Sudeikis, of course, but also to his astonishing teammates, nearly all of whom enjoyed dynamic growth over three seasons: Phil Dunster as the ever-maturing Jamie Tartt, Juno Temple as Keeley, Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard, Jeremy Swift as Higgins, Billy Harris as Colin Hughes, James Lance (whose turn as Trent Crimm rivaled the metamorphosis of Jamie Tartt), Toheeb Jimoh as the catalytic Sam Obisanya, and everybody else in the cast.
What I loved about this show, and especially about its final episode, was its consistently fine storytelling. The many superb writers, including Brett Goldstein, who epitomized deadpan as Roy Kent, brilliantly paced the action. We might anticipate where the plot was heading only to be proved wrong again and again. When the writers do set us up for an inevitable plot development, they don’t waste our time by showing us a superfluous scene confirming what we have anticipated. Instead, they jump to the next event in the story, the one that we can’t imagine. For example, at the end of the penultimate episode, we see Ted telling his boss Rebecca (played by the magnificent Hannah Waddingham, who is suddenly and gratifyingly everywhere on television, from Sex Education to Tom Jones), that he has news for her. We know the news: he’s quitting and heading home. Rather than start the next episode with a scene confirming our assumptions, we begin with Rebecca morosely refusing to discuss the prospect of life without Ted in London. Or, to cite another example, we see in one episode Nate (finely played by Nick Mohammed) become disillusioned with Rupert (the only unabashedly nasty character in the show, incarnated superbly by Anthony Head). Then in the next episode Nate has already separated from Rupert’s team. We don’t have to watch the expected; these writers make plenty of room for the unexpected. And the final montage, a community epilogue to show us where everybody lands, fulfills every wish that a viewer could have.
If you want to read another comparison of these two shows, check out Sophie Gilbert’s analysis in the on-line Atlantic. For the record, I wrote this essay before I read Gilbert’s, and she wrote hers before I posted mine.