In this golden era of prestige TV, the finest dramas have dual qualities. They can be viewed purely on a surface level and appreciated as diverting slices of entertainment. But they also leave trails both behind and in front of them, so everything from a post-finale over-analysis to a pre-season publicity picture are embossed with more significance than a decade of reality TV.

Is there something to be made of this last-season Succession image of the Roys out on the balcony of a skyscraper? Can it be deliberately doubling as a ship, with captain Logan (a peerless Brian Cox) steering them all towards a disaster of titanic proportions? This sadistic patriarch is also showing us an ostentatious watch, acknowledging that time is running out as the ever-convoluted plot to determine who should succeed him both thickens and threatens to spill over.

Other than live sporting occasions or Eurovision, event TV may have died when Derren Brown failed to blow his brains out playing Russian roulette in a European shed, but Succession’s weekly drip of poison feels like the closest we have come to old-school water-cooler fare since. This final batch of episodes will have traversed three whole calendar months before everyone’s fates are sealed. We all know that people whose souls are as empty as their offshore accounts are bulging can never truly be content, so the very notion of a happy ending is null and void. Even the most vaguely sympathetic characters (Kendall, Greg and Gerri) have proven themselves at various moments to be, in no particular order, weak, villainous and vain. 

The smart(ish) money seems to be on Logan having another health emergency, potentially fatal this time, and someone unlikely emerging from the swamp to unleash an almighty power grab. Worth bearing in mind at this point that not a single soul on the planet accurately predicted how The Sopranos or Mad Men would wrap up despite months of speculation as their climaxes loomed closer.  

Are there any clues regarding an ultimate conclusion emerging from this last season’s first episode? Difficult to say, but everyone is largely acting to type: Logan channels a bit of Goodfellas’ Joe Pesci in ‘asking’ a room of lickspittle acolytes to tell him a joke. As a mere aside, he refers to his estranged offspring of Shiv, Kendall and Roman as ‘rats’ and ‘morons’ (no surprise that he continues failing to make the shortlists for Employer Of The Month and Father Of The Year). Meanwhile, those ‘kids’ are hatching a new venture that’s bound to flop while shifty ghosts from seasons past float by for a spot of subtle manipulation. No worm can turn in Succession and expect not to have a knife stuck in their back. Wherever this is all headed, a bloodless conclusion seems fanciful.

Succession airs every Monday on Sky Atlantic/NOW TV.