Sunday 28 May: mark it for posterity. The end of this week marks the end of an era for television. On HBO in the US, and Sky and NOW in the UK, Succession will come to an end, after four seasons. The comedy-drama, which follows the bitter power struggles among a family of media tycoons, is by now fairly widely accepted as the best TV series of the past decade, and one of a small handful of candidates for the title of Best of All Time. Immediately afterwards, on the same channel(s), Barry – the smart, twisty dramedy about a hitman turned actor – will air its final episode, having also lasted just four seasons. Overnight, the medium of TV is going to get drastically poorer.
Taken at a glance – and if you leave aside any ongoing mass writers’ strikes – the TV landscape is overall in fine fettle. There were more TV shows last year than there ever have been before, many of which feature lavish production budgets and big-name film stars. This year has already seen a number of worthwhile series make their way to screens, including The Last of Us, Poker Face, Party Down and Jury Duty. But none of these shows can hold a candle to Succession. In modern TV, there is an abundance of the very good, and a terrible scarcity of the truly great. Barry has been one of Succession’s closest rivals, and it’s not particularly close. The excellent Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul finished last year, too, as did Donald Glover’s Atlanta: how many of the “best shows currently on TV” from even just a year ago are still going to be around next week? It’s all looking rather past tense.
