Is Succession Worth Watching?
Short answer: Yes, if you can keep up with the dialogue.
What you should know going in
Four seasons, 39 episodes, HBO. Created by Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show, The Thick of It). The Roy family controls Waystar Royco, a global media conglomerate. The patriarch Logan refuses to name a successor. The four adult children (Kendall, Shiv, Roman, Connor) circle each other and their father across four seasons of corporate maneuvering, family dinners, and language that operates like a contact sport.
Brian Cox plays Logan. Jeremy Strong plays Kendall. Sarah Snook plays Shiv. Kieran Culkin plays Roman. Matthew Macfadyen plays Tom. The cinematography is handheld documentary-style; the pacing is rapid; the dialogue is by far the densest on prestige television.
The case for
Cognitive Stimulation (45/50): Succession's dialogue rewards integration. A joke in Season 1 Episode 2 lands in Season 4 Episode 7. The Shakespeare-adjacent inheritance plot is structurally faithful to King Lear without being literal about it. The show demands the viewer hold three simultaneous registers: corporate jargon, family-dinner cruelty, and theatrical-soliloquy interiority.
Craft & Quality (44/50): Nicholas Britell's score is one of the few prestige-TV soundtracks that operates as an actual structural argument (the variations on the main theme correspond precisely to character status shifts). The handheld camera commits to documentary-realism while the dialogue commits to theater. The structural collision is the show's actual aesthetic.
Educational Value (35/50): Succession is a serious primer on how media oligarchies actually work. The boardroom logic, the shareholder maneuvering, the way succession plans actually get sabotaged inside families that own controlling interests, this is researched at a level rare for prestige TV.
The case against
The dialogue is genuinely difficult to follow. Subtitles are recommended. Viewers who watch passively or while doing other things will miss approximately half the show's payload.
Every character is unlikeable in a specific way. The show is structurally committed to refusing redemption arcs. Viewers who need to root for someone will struggle.
Season 1 takes seven episodes to find its register. Many viewers drop out by Episode 4 of Season 1. This is the show's structural cost: it commits to being uncomfortable before it commits to being satisfying.
The methodology verdict
On the TVI rubric, Succession scores 162 (Masterclass tier). The dialogue density, the structural fidelity to King Lear's inheritance argument, and the willingness to refuse character redemption all earn the score.
Worth watching if: you are willing to use subtitles, willing to sit with characters you actively dislike, willing to push past Season 1 Episode 4. Worth watching if you have any interest in how media empires work, in how family wealth functions as a structural problem, or in language as performance.
Not worth watching if: you need a likable protagonist, prefer plot-driven shows, or expect to watch while multitasking.
Frequently asked
What is Succession's IQ Score on TV Intelligentsia?
Succession scores 162 out of 200 (Masterclass tier). Cognitive Stimulation: 45/50. Educational Value: 35/50. Craft & Quality: 44/50. The dialogue density and structural fidelity to King Lear are the primary drivers.
How long is Succession?
Four seasons (2018-2023), 39 episodes total. Runtime is approximately 60 minutes per episode. Total commitment is around 39 hours. The show ended at Season 4.
Do I need to use subtitles for Succession?
Strongly recommended. The dialogue is dense, the accents vary, and approximately half the jokes are buried in throwaway lines that audio alone makes easy to miss.
Is Succession based on the Murdoch family?
Jesse Armstrong has been clear that the Roy family is a composite of several media oligarchies (Murdoch, Redstone, Maxwell), not a roman a clef of any single one. The show borrows structural elements from all three families while inventing the specific characters.
TV Intelligentsia scores every major series on a published methodology rubric. IQ Score is a content rating, not an intelligence measurement.
See the full Succession score breakdown