Somebody Somewhere and Succession

Michael and I have been devoting an hour and a half of our Sunday nights to watching two of the new series on HBO. One is wildly popular and one is not. You can guess which one we enjoy more: the unpopular one with the excellent acting, excellent writing, and alternative midwestern universe that celebrates friendship and love in all of its configurations. The comedy in Somebody Somewhere is real, and the characters are both decidedly offbeat and authentic.

The musical component in the episode we watched last night (season 2, episode 2) reflects the comedy of real midwestern life (which I know so very well).

It comes online after Succession, and it serves as an antidote.

We watched the first three seasons of Succesion with interest (and we also watched them after all three were available to stream in, er, succession). There were moments of excellent acting, and there were hints of interesting backstory possibilities to suggest why the main characters were all so damaged, but most of our time was spent in anticipation of what was to come. And what seemed to be interesting plot line possibilities gradually vanished.

Now in the fourth and final season we find ourselves bored with the characters, bored with the plot, and tired of having to keep the subtitles on so that we can understand the mumbled profanity-riddled banter. But we feel what we have to justify our sunken interests.

We have "sunken" so low.

The only thing that I consistently like about the show is the incidental music, which seems to be based mostly on a fragment four minutes into the second movement of the Schubert Opus 100 Piano Trio. Sometimes it is combined with the introductory measures of the Schubert "Serenade," and sometimes it isn't. When the ultra rich moguls are in England the music sounds influenced by Dowland, and when they are in Tuscany the music sounds influenced by Italian Renaissance composers, but not any specific one.