Next in line to the throne

Missing ‘Succession’? ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ is another feuding family TV epic for the ages

- Louis Chilton

If you ever want a lesson in form vs content, just take a look at The Righteous Gemstones and Succession. At a glance, the two shows – Succession, which came to a momentous end earlier this year, and Gemstones, which was just renewed for a fourth season – could not be more different. Succession was erudite, sophisticated, epoch-making. An awards darling. Gemstones, meanwhile, is crass, puerile, unserious. And snubbed by the major awards bodies. (Gemstones has, however, proved a hit in the US, recently clocking an average of 5.1 million viewers per episode for season two, in the same ballpark as Succession.) Both series, in their own radically different ways, attack the same issues: generational trauma; sibling rivalry; the poison of capitalism. Gemstones is Succession warped in a funhouse mirror.

Instead of the venal, squabbling Roy family, Gemstones follows the venal, squabbling Gemstones – a clan of ultrarich televangelists in the American South. Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) is the stern, inscrutable patriarch; Edi Patterson, Adam DeVine and Danny McBride (who also created the series) play his obnoxious adult children. In many ways, Gemstones is a direct continuation of McBride’s previous work with producerdirector Jody Hill, which includes the cult TV favourites Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals.