10 Actors Who Recently Nailed Great TV Performances
4. Jeremy Strong - Succession (HBO)
HBO's greatest shows have had a habit of defining prestige television for the decade they're in. In the nineties it was The Sopranos; in the noughties, it was The Wire; in the teensies it was Game Of Thrones. In the new twenties, Jesse Armstrong's pitch-perfect black comedy-drama Succession has pretty much sucked in all the oxygen, it's that good and that well-received.
Shows like this live and die on their writing and the performances that animate it, and Succession is an ensemble that practically conducts an acting masterclass in every episode. Bu if there's a standout it's Jeremy Strong, as the ambitious, flawed little-boy-lost Kendall Roy, the man who would be king in place of his father.
A recent profile in The New Yorker providing forensic detail on Strong's acting methods was a PR disaster for the man, but there's no arguing with the results. In a cast of performers delivering some of the best work on television, Strong is head and shoulders above the rest: complex, intelligent, and charismatic while never failing to serve the story and the character over his own ego as an actor.