Nothing Succeeds Like Succession (excerpt)

Synopsis:

Pierce has spent years trying to make it as a writer.

She and Matt share a combative relationship in which he tries to love her and she treats him like crap.

For her birthday, he buys her what he believes to be the perfect gift:  A boxed set of the scripts from the streaming series ‘Succession’.

He does this because he believes that their fractured, fiery, dysfunctional relationship could serve as the material for a further season of ‘Succession’ – a kind of spin-off centring the Tom and Shiv characters, whom he feels that he and Pierce mirror precisely.

In the midst of all this, she divorces him and finds herself pregnant.  He is a possible father to the child.

He finally convinces her to write the series with him, bearing in mind Jesse Armstrong’s central theses that (a) real characters have no transformational arc (i.e. they learn nothing) and (b) your characters don’t necessarily have to have any redeeming features in order for a series to succeed.

Character Breakdown:

The play is a 2-hander:  1 female, 1 male
PIERCE   43
MATT  39

Running-time:  95 minutes

Production History:  Not yet produced.

Excerpt available for download for free.