Previously on Succession, Kendall 'Ken' Roy had put the cat amongst the pigeons, set a bull loose in several china shops and triggered the internet to scurry down innumerable rabbit holes with his dramatic refusal to be the fall guy. Not only did he decide not to play ball in his appointed role as chief executive scapegoat for the gross crimes committed on behalf of Waystar Royco (the umbrella conglomerate under which the Roy family's media operations exist), he metaphorically grabbed the head of his father Logan and plunged it straight down a profusely blocked, but still metaphorical WC. All of this was played out in the public arena of a press conference, with Kendall, literally this time, tearing up the script; given the mortal secret his father has on him, he risks scribbling his own death warrant.

This is where we are at the re-commencement of Jesse Armstrong's salty and sensational family drama in which almost every member of said family, the Roys, are colossal numbnuts. Sure, we might feel a little sorry for Kendall (still played with simmering mania by the highly committed Jeremy Strong) as he seems to be the least worst human in this clan, but the competition is hardly fierce. Roman 'Romulus' Roy (Kieran Culkin) continues to spout garbage and throw out petty insults to all and sundry despite being hamstrung by a wafer-thin intellect and even slimmer skillset. At one point, Papa Logan (played with mischievous malevolence by the redoubtable Brian Cox) insists that Roman has matured to such a degree that he can probably now take a major step up in the business, unaware that this all-new responsible Roman has been simulating oral sex some five feet away.

Then there's Siobhan 'Shiv' Roy (Sarah Snook) whose marriage of inconvenience to the needy Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) teeters ever closer to the brink. Not only did Siobhan propose a threesome hours after being wed, she now tells him to stop whining over his current obsession with spending the next few years in a prison cell where the food is bland and the fine wine non-existent. And finally we have arguably the most useless of them all, Connor 'Con' Roy (Alan Ruck) whose populist run for political office made Trump's campaign seem almost Obama-like for restraint, intelligence and decency.

The grand finale of season two, though, has cast something of a shadow over the next batch, painting the writers into a corner where now everything and anything is related to Kendall's last-minute Machiavellian U-turn. Characters that previously had something close to their own arc are relegated to eliciting wonderful phrases and cutting barbs that are in service only to themselves. But there are still enough moments in which one Roy or another expresses such jaw-dropping awfulness to remind us that Succession is one of the most thrilling rides on TV (and which possesses most probably the 21st century's top theme tune). Just as last season threw a bomb into that most benign of settings (a financial entity's press conference), this one features a shareholder AGM that has some of the finest, farce-based fun ever set to the small screen. That pigeon-chasing feline referenced at the beginning may well have resurrected itself into an imaginary moggie which a dementia-tinged (though most likely not) Logan is being haunted and taunted by.

While last season had Kendall Roy truly rocking the gilet, this time around he's often to be spied scowling into the middle distance or grinning with hidden menace beneath a dark baseball cap. Having seen seven of this season's nine episodes, some things also need to be kept under a reviewer's hat. But it's not too spoilery to reveal that if all you ever take from Succession is the ingenuity of curses and crafting of descriptions, you'll be delighted to know that they're as florid and on-point as ever: it might even be a fun game to guess which boy sibling is given the title of Little Lord FuckleRoy …

Succession, Sky Atlantic, Mondays, 9pm; episode one available on NOW TV.