On a scale of 1 to Succession Season 3, how dysfunctional is your family? The Roys’ ruthless infighting to control their media empire makes for a family drama of Shakespearean proportions. Season 3 is over, but you don’t have to settle for only watching the drama playing out in your own living room. At GBH, we know a thing or two about drama. Here are five of our favorite shows on GBH Passport, all deliciously dramatic and dysfunctional in their own way.
Lucy Worsley’s Royal Myths & Secrets
Available on GBH Passport
While the Roys are portrayed as American royalty of sorts, no fiction can match the real-life histories of Britain and Europe’s reigning families. Lucy Worsley’s six-part series investigates the inside stories of royal subjects from Marie Antoinette to the Romanovs. There’s plenty of palace intrigue, bloody battles and scandalous marriage arrangements (looking at you, King Henry VIII).
Howards End
Available on GBH Passport
Class, wealth, family, real estate: Kenneth Lonergan’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel has it all. Howards End is the titular property that binds three families together. The culture clash between the liberal, bourgeois Schlegels and the more austere Wilcoxes appears tame —think lots of polite intellectual sparring—but is on the verge of boiling over at any minute. It's a compelling drama thanks to an outstanding cast that includes Succession’s own Matthew Macfadyen.
Downton Abbey
Available onGBH Passport
Julian Fellowes’ glittering saga of the aristocratic Grantham and Crawley families at the turn of the 20th century is British period drama’s soapy upstairs/downstairs pleasure. From the caustic Dowager Countess and her sparring granddaughters to the scheming servants, there’s plenty of mortifying gossip and classically British stiff upper lips. But will the family manage in the face of changing social structures and the first World War?
American Experience: Citizen Hearst
Available on GBH Passport
This is the definitive portrait of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was both the inspiration for Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane and - according to Succession writer and creator Jesse Armstrong - Waystar Royco media mogul and problematic patriarch, Logan Roy. Hearst’s empire created an outsized impact on American life, and this film chronicles his rise to unprecedented political power. There’s also an intriguing succession story that ends in Hearst’s grandson, William Randolph Hearst III, running today’s Hearst Corporation, a leading global media company.
Guilt
Available on GBH Passport
A horrific accident unites two estranged brothers who apparently never learned that the cover-up, not the crime, is what really takes you down. Increasingly, the fraternal co-conspirators find themselves in a nightmarish situation in which they can’t trust anyone, including each other. Guilt, a darkly comic Scottish drama, serves up next-level family dysfunction. Start binging now. Season 2 just aired, featuring new cast members Phyllis Logan (Downton Abbey) and Sara Vickers (Endeavour).
