Succession is over, the world’s rudest smart-ass quips are silenced, and for fans staring into their empty glass of Dom Pérignon (or cup of tea), Monday nights won’t be the same. Of course there are other involving, adult-minded, high-end TV dramas out there to fill a Roys-shaped hole, so here are our 11 streaming suggestions. And don’t worry, there’s no The White Lotus, House of the Dragon or The Last of Us — you’ll have surely heard enough about those by now.
The Morning Show
Succession isn’t the only smart-mouthed drama depicting the backbiting world of big media. The Morning Show, back soon for a third series, is set in and around the studios of a morning news show where the vibe is every bit as fractious as at Waystar Royco on election night. Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are the squabbling on-off friends/co-anchors and Steve Carell the disgraced former star, with Billy Crudup stealing the whole thing as the string-pulling media exec in charge. It’s very on the nose, often wildly uneven, but rarely less than addictive in a sharp-elbowed kind of way. AppleTV+
Barry
The Emmy award-winning HBO comedy-drama co-created by Bill Hader has just ended after four series, and in-the-know TV connoisseurs like to say that it’s better than Succession. It’s not, but it is good. Hader, a very funny Saturday Night Live alumnus, plays it serious here as a depressed hitman who travels to Los Angeles to carry out a contract and finds himself taking an acting class. In the capable hands of Hader and the former Seinfeld writer Alec Berg, Barry pulls off the tricky tonal balancing act between its antihero’s day job as a killer and the world of precious LA thespians. It features a late career high from Henry Winkler, who plays Barry’s self-important acting coach. Sky/Now
Severance
The corporation at the heart of this paranoid nine-part mystery is as Kafkaesque as it gets: a place of sterile corridors and drone-like computer workers. They have had a chip put in their brains that means when they are inside the building they have no memory of their personal life outside, and vice versa. Our unhappy hero Mark (Adam Scott) is about to unravel the mystery of the place (where we also find Patricia Arquette, John Turturro and Christopher Walken) in a sci-fi-tinged series steeped in enigmatic ennui — the TV drama equivalent of a latter-day Radiohead track. One of the most fêted shows of the past year. AppleTV+
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Just like in Succession, the characters of this eight-parter based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novel are anything but happy, despite their affluence. It starts out like a comedy of New York manners as the newly divorced doctor Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) discovers the joys of dating apps. Things soon unspool into his crisis of fatherhood, and just when you wonder how much of his self-justifying behaviour you can take, the upending story of his ex-wife (Claire Danes) comes clear, then that of Toby’s best friend (and the show’s narrator), Libby, played by Lizzy Caplan. It becomes, inevitably, a meditation on modern midlife malaise, and one that sucks you in. Disney+
Beef
More unhappy Americans behaving badly. In this compelling drama the paths of two strangers — the struggling contractor Danny and the self-made entrepreneur Amy — cross during a road rage incident. It quickly spirals out of control, going from petty tit-for-tat to an entertainingly violent feud, the pair taking out their wider frustrations with the world on each other. Filming the series was so stressful for its stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong that they broke out in hives. Watching it could prove a similarly fraught experience. Netflix
Riches
Hyped by some as a British-set answer to Succession, featuring as it does a chief executive patriarch playing his children off against each other for control of his company, this is actually more like Dynasty. Hugh Quarshie is Stephen Richards, the UK’s most successful black businessman and the owner of a company selling black hair and beauty products. When he snuffs it early in proceedings his estranged daughter Nina (the Shiv Roy here) is named the new head of the empire, but Richards’s wife won’t give it up without a fight. The dialogue has none of the smart-ass cleverness you might hope for, but some may find the soapy nastiness to be escapist fun. ITVX
Slow Horses
A drama about MI5 failures led by belching, farting, boozing, chain-smoking Jackson Lamb may seem as far a cry as possible from Succession’s sleek boardrooms. But in this adaptation of Mick Herron’s books Gary Oldman is magisterial as the renegade spy boss leading his troupe of Slough House rejects in their battles against baddies as well as the far better-resourced “dogs” at MI5 HQ. Kristin Scott Thomas is on song as the glacially imperious MI5 No 2, Diana Taverner, and Jack Lowden excels as the Slough Houser River Cartwright, a man whose privileged background leaves him with much to prove. There are two series available, and two more in the pipeline. AppleTV+
Yellowstone
Another family saga to sink your teeth into, this one set over decades when you count its prequel spin-offs, 1883 (starring Sam Elliott) and 1923 (starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren). Yellowstone has been called a western Succession — a loose comparison — with Kevin Costner the patriarch of the Dutton family, dealing with the factions vying for control of his land (no media barons here, just oil barons, but they’re every bit as avaricious). Dutton also has adult children to deal with, all difficult in their own ways, and morality is a murky currency indeed. It has become one of America’s biggest shows. Paramount+
Industry
Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the former bankers behind this high-octane, sex-fuelled HBO/BBC drama set among the hardworking (and harder partying) denizens of the City firm Pierpoint & Co, make few concessions to the complexity of their world. But the characters — such as Myha’la Herrold’s vulnerable yet ruthless young banker Harper Stern and Marisa Abela’s pampered daddy’s girl Yasmin — are so deftly drawn it’s easy to navigate the pulsating emotions behind the complex stories of business brinkmanship complete with a whole pile of often acronym and initial-heavy slang terms including WACs, DCFs, Beeps and half-yards. iPlayer
The Diplomat
If Succession offered a terrifying view of American politics, with presidential candidates in the thrall of a media magnate, The Diplomat takes a more reassuring view. The president here (played by Michael McKean) is pragmatic and no fascist. However, this eight-parter focuses on Keri Russell’s newly installed American ambassador in London. She has to learn fast — a Middle East crisis is escalating — and she is helped, sometimes hindered, by her smoothie husband (Rufus Sewell), himself a diplomat. It’s slightly ridiculous, but after a stodgy first episode it becomes glossily watchable, with the snappy dialogue you’d expect from a “2020s West Wing”. Netflix
Yellowjackets
The first series of this grisly US drama flipped between timelines: 1996, when a high school girls’ soccer team becomes stranded in the wilderness after their aircraft crashes, and 25 years later, when they are going to great lengths to hide the hideous things they did to survive. As such it was a hybrid: a Lord of the Flies coming-of-age horror colliding with a Big Little Lies-type drama. In the present-day storyline we had Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci among the friends, and the whole thing became a sleeper hit. The recent second series offered more twists and traumas, with Elijah Wood joining the cast. Sky/Paramount+