Commentary: The major miscalculation behind 'Succession's' unspectacular season

Logan Roy, the patriarch of the HBO series "Succession," is every inch an irascible king. Cut from the same cloth as Rupert Murdoch, he lords over his right-wing media kingdom with a dyspeptic ferocity that routinely erupts in a two-word kiss-off that can't be printed in a family newspaper.

Ruthless in battle, he reserves his cruelest weapon, his bludgeoning wit, for those in his inner sanctum. With a single withering remark, he can cut the legs out from under one of his adult children grown too big for their britches.

If Logan at times resembles a King Lear transported to 21st century New York, it's not simply because the character is played by the inestimable Brian Cox, an actor who successfully tackled the role of Lear in a Royal National Theatre production that toured the world and wrote a book, "The Lear Diaries," on the experience.

In the third season of "Succession," the Shakespearean parallels