How Succession became the must-watch for corporates

SITES from Forbes to The New York Times offer blow-by-blow recaps of each episode. Corporate leaders are interviewed for their “key takeaways” from the show. Financial podcasts such as Slate Money devote entire episodes to dissecting the plots and characters. Style publications such as GQ and W Magazine spot the suits and watches. There’s even an Instagram account called SuccessionFashion that tells you who wore what in which episode, with over 120,000 followers.

If there’s one TV drama that’s being obsessed over by the C-suite, financial crowd and aspirational classes, it’s Succession. When the show first premiered in 2018 on HBO, its ratings were miserably low. But by the third season, it had gained traction, with viewership numbers per episode crossing the seven-million mark. (For comparison, HBO’s tent pole Game Of Thrones attracted 12 million viewers for its second season and 14 million for its third, before rising to 44 million for its eighth season.) 

Now halfway through its fourth and final season, Succession is throwing up jaw-droppers as never before.