The end credits of Succession rolled and the debate was already on the table. Is it the best series ever? Can it be said, at least, that it is among the best? A fourth season that knew how to channel the critics’ conversation offered the opportunity on a platter to series fans, especially when the final stretch generated consensus instead of recent experiences like Game of Thrones. But, sorry, I don’t want to get into this debate for one reason: when one of the parties of quality fiction doesn’t have the real option to participate in the discussion, it’s not worth having. The competition becomes incomplete, futile and contributes to dilate television prejudices and a look that contemplates that which is masculine as superior.
The Sopranos, which led the Second Golden Age of Series, set a trend. David Chase’s drama was out of the television mold with a leisurely work where the figure of the hero did not exist. The dialogues and topics of conversation could be taken to the extreme and both violence and sex could be addressed without the censorship of traditional television. It had a lot to do with the channel it was broadcast on: HBO, which was paid and therefore not due to advertisers or the rules of free-to-air television. And, taking Tony Soprano’s existential crisis as the main reference, television has shown a clear bias when it comes to analyzing and approving subsequent television.
It is no coincidence that, after having the conversation about the best series in history with The Sopranos, this debate was revived again with the broadcasts of Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which ended in 2013 and 2015 respectively. The commonalities were remarkable. They proposed straight middle-aged men in the lead characters, who fit the new anti-hero description. They were slow-cooking dramas that addressed conflicts related to their status as men and fathers of families.
After a halt in conversations around the best series in history, partly because Game of Thrones ruined its own reputation in the final stretch, now it’s time to dust off the debate again. And with what series does he recover? With a family drama about a millionaire and toxic patriarch who, faced with the idea of ​​his death, wants his children to fight among themselves like mad dogs for control of the company.
Its creator Jesse Armstrong made an intelligent work with some scripts to frame. The conflicts of the deplorable characters mark the interactions. The situations are written with an almost sitcom sense of rhythm. There are a thousand and one ways to humiliate a human being. By the way, Trump’s post-irruption times are scathingly read and, to top it off, it has actors in symbiosis with their characters and sophisticated production values ​​that emancipate Succession from direct comparison with Dallas and Dynasty.
Succession may distance itself from the works mentioned in the rhythm but it also bears similarities. It is the portrait of a world of men from an eminently masculine perspective (Shiv, after all, has been the only main female character in a field of turnips and, consequently, has been a collateral victim of patriarchy). Conflicts around masculinity, the transfer of its most toxic qualities, power and corruption are addressed. The viewer’s morality is challenged based on the irredeemable opinions and actions of the characters. And, in addition, he had a very determined sense of adult fiction: due to the financial environment, the vocabulary used, the habitual need to face emotion from cynicism.
However, beyond whether it has the qualities to enter into the conversation about the best series in history, here the question I raise is another: whether the framework in which we usually have this discussion is the right one. And it is that it is a framework with its own rules, which gives more value to the stories of men (and, if we expand, we could add the labels of whites and heterosexuals), to certain genres and themes, and where you can even rule out a title for committing such a heinous sin as being carried away by feelings, emotion or romantic plots without holding back.
And, while the media questioned whether The Sopranos, Breaking bad or Mad men were the best series in history, there was no shortage of examples of great television that were broadcast at the same time in the United States (and, I admit, I speak from an Anglo-Saxon mentality). . I mean Damages, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, The good wife, Girls, Enlightened, Friday night lights, Insecure, The OA, Mare of Easttown, Bob’s burgers, The Haunting of Hill House, Fleabag, I Could Destroy You, Halt and catch fire, Pachinko, The Handmaid’s Tale, Transparent or that Big little lies that in its miniseries format must be the most powerful of the last decade. All of them are fictions that don’t fit the cheat mold of quality fiction and therefore never really had a chance to enter the conversation.
The day that we can relocate these titles in the cultural, social and critical imaginary from a real and unprejudiced equality, perhaps we will be able to reopen the inconsequential debate of “the best television series in history” with some sense.
