10 TV Villains Who Stole The Show

3. Logan Roy (Succession)

Logan Roy doesn’t steal the show exactly - he IS the show - but his presence in HBO’s latest smash hit Succession is so great that he dominates every scene he’s in and every scene he isn’t in equally. Brian Cox’s towering performance has been rightly lauded, and between this and Jesse Armstrong’s scintillating writing, Logan Roy is the most frightening octogenarian in TV history.

Logan is an all consuming force of nature, driven by primal urges to accrue wealth and power, to consume and to dominate. His children are all petrified of him to varying degrees, and he takes a perverse glee in playing them off against one another. His rare moments of warmth are quickly undercut by his shark-like instincts to look out for number one at all costs. He controls his business and his family with the same iron fist - he is a King Lear type who has no intention of stepping down from the throne.

Succession is at its core a family comedy (albeit a family of billionaires), but the laughs tend to stop when it comes to the petrifying patriarch. In a show grounded in reality, Logan holds an almost supernatural level of power.