Succession

A gleeful, brainy send-up of New York City media conglomerates and one percenters, Succession revels in the dysfunction of the Roy family and its members’ outlandish antics to control the clan’s empire, Waystar Royco. In just two seasons Brian Cox, who plays patriarch Logan, has established himself as one of TV’s most delicious villains of all time: This is a man who revels in pitting his children against one another (Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, and Jeremy Strong are standouts) and debasing and dehumanizing his subordinates on a whim. In one excruciatingly memorable episode, he commands them to wrestle like pigs on the ground for hot dogs (a game he calls “Boar on the Floor”) in a grotesque show of power at a corporate retreat. The sets and the wardrobes are luscious and careful attention is paid to every detail including the faux chyrons that scroll across the screen of the Roy family’s ATN cable news network (see “Gender Fluid Illegals May Be Entering the Country ‘Twice’”). For being as rich, complex, and terrifying as the family it portrays, Succession is awarded a Peabody.