Succession is nominated for the outstanding drama Emmy, but isn't it a comedy?

Vulture

"It’s weird to see Succession nominated as a drama, because, in so many ways, Succession is a comedy," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "While the Television Academy now categorizes shows by format rather than genre — meaning that, as far as the Emmys are concerned, there’s no such thing as an hour-long comedy — Succession’s drama nomination points to something fascinating, subtle, and productively uneasy at the center of the show. Trying to define its genre gets at questions not just about its fundamental identity, but also at the way viewers see it, something that’s particularly thorny for a show that teases us about whether we should love or loathe its characters, whether we should root for them or hope that they fail, whether we should find their fears and anxieties sympathetic or pitiful. The answer is that while we can feel for the Roys, while their lives are tragic and their anxieties are real, Succession’s core identity comes from satirizing them and their hyper-privileged world. The baseline comedic feature of Succession is the simplest one. It is funny. It is peppered with jokes and absurdities, everything from the Vaulter headlines, to the Roy family insults, to the conceit of Cousin Greg’s presence in the show at all. Succession is often funny in the way slapstick can be funny, a humor that relies on the primal Schadenfreude of watching someone else get hurt, even if the pain in this case is nearly always psychic rather than physical. But it’s also funny in the way of satire, a more puncturing, slicing kind of humor." VanArendonk adds: "These comedic elements — the show’s visual language, its joke density, its hyper-specific satire of media and wealth — are comedy operating on a micro scale."

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• Succession doesn't hate the super-rich as much you think it does: "Let's not mistake this show for what it isn't," says Aaron Bady. "It's a show about a decadent billionaire family that falls in love with its subject, and it carries the audience along with it on the strength of the writing. But by making them pathetic — by wringing pathos out of their suffering and comedy from their clueless ineptitude — it redeems them from all of the utterly true critiques it might otherwise seem to be making of the super-rich. Could anyone be evil if they are this lost, unhappy, and stupid? It seems strange to answer 'no' during the Trump presidency, and yet that's where it feels like Succession is landing."