Jesse Armstrong’s “Succession” is a wincingly hilarious dark comedy about some of the worst people on Earth repeatedly stabbing each other in the back as they scheme to become the heir-apparent to a massive media empire. That they’re all family members only makes their deviousness all the more pathetic. The running joke of the show is that none of these people possess the steely cunning of the company’s aging honcho, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), and no one knows this better than Logan himself.
Of the potential successors, there wasn’t a more hapless figure than the dark horse, not-really-in-the-running Tom Wambsgans. Matthew Macfadyen won two Primetime Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Shiv Roy’s (Sarah Snook) bumbling, hateful husband, whose station in the family is improved when he becomes the acerbic mentor of Nicholas Braun’s Greg Hirsch (whose own profound ineptitude makes Tom look like an expert in the business universe). Nevertheless, Tom is an empty suit trapped in a mostly-loveless marriage that seems forever on the verge of ending. When he’s made the head of the company’s amusement park and cruise division, there is every indication that his ascent, such as it was, has ended. This doesn’t stop Tom from clumsily working angles and making a spectacular ass out of himself, but, in the end, his loyalty to the brand and utter lack of shame earns him the keys to the Roy kingdom.
Macfadyen is a versatile actor, but the man plays losers like Itzhak Perlman works a Stradivarius. And, judging from the just-released trailer, he might be on the verge of performing his masterpiece in the upcoming Netflix miniseries, “Death by Lightning,” as Charles Giteau, a deluded, lifelong joke of a man whose desire for some kind of prominence drove him to shoot President James A. Garfield in 1881.
