With apologies to all the other television being made this year, none of it is promised to be more exciting than the long-awaited third series of the razor-sharp drama-comedy Succession (Sky Atlantic).
The first episode finally landed this week and lived up to all the expectation.
Readers might be familiar with the show’s name.
Shot in Dundee
Not least, because the 2019 episode ’Dundee’ featured the return to his childhood home city of US media magnate Logan Roy (local hero Brian Cox) and a much-publicised segment filmed at the V&A, during which Logan’s dismal, spoiled-brat son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) performed a rap in his father’s honour.
A catch-up for those uninitiated: Logan is the most powerful and ruthless media baron on the planet, head of Waystar Royco, but he’s getting old and wants to pass his dynasty on to one of his children.
Will it be desperate mediabro Kendall? Bad taste playboy Roman (Kieran Culkin)? Socially conscious politico Shiv (Sarah Snook)? Or wannabe President of the United States Connor (Alan Ruck)?
At the end of the second series Kendall looked out of the running, as he stood up in front of a press conference and told the world that Logan knew about the cover-up of historic sex crimes on the company’s cruise ships.
Like a Shakespearean tragedy with more sarcastic dialogue, war had been declared between father and son.
In ‘Secession’, the action picks up in the minutes after Kendall’s revelation.
Buoyantly dim-witted cousin and newly-designated ‘media monitoring’ department Greg (Nicholas Braun) tells a shell-shocked Kendall, “The Pope followed you!”, not realising fake Twitter accounts are a thing.
High on power
Kendall is high on the power of just possibly getting more attention than his father for once in his life, though.
“This is like O.J.,” chirps Greg as they motor through the city evading journalists. “If O.J. never killed anyone…”
“Who said I never killed anyone?” barks Kendall. “The Juice is loose, baby!”
Dark secrets and escape plans
It’s a secret known only to Kendall, Logan and the viewers, of course, that Kendall did kill someone in a cocaine-fuelled car crash, which his father was able to make ‘go away’.
Logan, meanwhile, is searching for a suitable country (one without an extradition treaty to the US) to hole up in, and the cracks are starting to show.
“Play it smart today, you won’t look a **** tomorrow,” is his hard-bitten mantra.
A perfect hour of telly
This was a low-key first episode, part aftermath, part set-up for what’s to follow, but it was still a perfect hour of telly, once again displaying the precise balance of political intrigue and sublimely excruciating character comedy which creator Jesse Armstrong is known for.
There are eight more episodes to go, and if you aren’t watching Succession yet, then you really need to.
On the other hand, you don’t necessarily need to watch Shetland (BBC One), which came back for its sixth series this week, with Douglas Henshall’s dour and recently maternally-bereaved D.I.
Jimmy Perez investigating the doorstep shooting of a controversial local lawyer.
Amid the standard-issue prime-time whodunit dynamics, however, the photography of Shetland itself is beautiful.
As ever, the roll-call of A-list guest Scottish acting talent (this time including Cora Bissett, Stephen McCole and Benny Young) is a big draw.
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