JACI STEPHEN: Deliciously psychopathic SUCCESSion! Our favorite family of cut throats is back

Dracula, eat your heart out. You're competing with a bloodthirsty lot.

The ogre who is Logan Roy, and the Three Muppeteers, Kendall, Shiv and Roman dive headfirst back into their vicious familial warfare in season 4 of Succession.

The triumvirate is desperately grasping for a multi-billion dollar deal to acquire Pierce Global Media.

Against the backdrop of a mansion that would have Prince Harry and Meghan Markle salivating with envy, and glowing rays of sunshine (it never rains in Succession), they've been in heated discussions with an eerily serene Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones), a woman who, with her calm demeanour, seems just a breath away from rigor mortis. But don't be fooled by the placid surface - below the waterline lurks a killer.

She may seem as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but in reality, Nan could eat a dairy farm for breakfast with Lady Macbeth on the side.

Shiv (Sarah Snook) on a phone is like Mad Men on acid. Can we go to six? Eight? Is nine and a half our final? Do we need to go to 10? Call Tom. More sums. Jeez. So many figures. So little time. It's like a Math Bee competition.

Kendall (Jeremy Strong), with his permanently pursed lips in full lemon-sucking mode, believes that the new generation of Roys 'have a song to sing.'

Not that you'd know it. Whatever song he's singing, it's certainly not Walking on Sunshine. Does he ever smile? Somebody bring on the pliers and wrench those jaws open, please.

Then there's Roman (Kieran Culkin), talking so fast, it's as if his teeth for fighting for air space.

And Shiv, whose hands would never be able to stay away from adjusting her hair long enough to pop a cork.

'We would maintain your values,' she assures Nan to seal the agreement.

Er, would they be the same kind of values that made you tell your husband Tom (Matthew MacFadyen) on your wedding day that you'd be sleeping around?

But Nan the closet Devil worshiper has made her decision.

The kids have won! Logan's bid is rejected, and the youngsters are giddy with excitement and ready to have a Champagne celebration.

Now they're in control. Smug b*****ds.

The ogre who is Logan Roy (Brian Cox, above center), and the Three Muppeteers, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) dive headfirst back into their vicious familial warfare in season 4 of Succession.

The triumvirate have just landed a deal for $10 billion for the acquisition of Pierce Global Media.

Then comes the call. 'Congratulations on saying the biggest number, yer f***ing morons.'

Oh, dear. Daddy is not happy. In fact, Daddy appears in danger of self-combustion. He delivers the gutting line to his progeny and storms off. His face is contorted in revulsion. It's really Roy's best look.

You can sense the trio's bubble burst louder than someone breaking wind in an elevator. Their buyer's remorse could be cut with a rusty samurai sword.

Everything that is the pain and pleasure about Succession is here in this scene and crystallized in that moment of Logan's uncontrollable disgust. All the cut-throat vileness of this dysfunctional family's life is distilled into these minutes.

And the settings that are so sumptuous and overpowering as to dwarf the pettiness taking place in and around them. The writing, pared down to its bare minimum with not a syllable wasted in order to give the scenes dramatic punch. The characters, whose strengths enjoy momentary glory before being cut down to size and whose failings are exposed in a nanosecond.

In tone and in dialogue, this series has to be among the best in TV dramas history.

Surely the Three Muppeteers are doomed to failure as they explore new ventures, most notably The Hundred.

What is it? 'The Hundred is Substack meets Masterclass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker,' explains Kendall, who is to business what Elon Musk is to bicycles.

Roman speaks for us all when he replies: 'I feel like we said iconic, and you guys are leaning ironic.'

His great one-liners are the funniest and also the most pertinent, and his jolly demeanour belies a good business sense.

Speaking to Kendall and Shiv, he rants: 'You want to f**k dad, you want to f**k Tom, and I'm the only one who wants to set up a business as a business and doesn't want to f**k anyone.'

Well done, that man. He'll go far.

Logan's one-liners are a little more direct. 'Munsters. Meet the f***ing Munsters,' he seethes, surveying the guests at his 80th birthday party.

'Why is everyone so f***ing happy?' he grunts, before storming off to the elevator with Colin (Scott Nicholson) to a diner. 'You're my best pal,' he tells him. Hmmm. Logan hasn't had a real pal since they cut his umbilical cord.

With the offspring he has bullied and conspired against having flown the nest, both emotionally and financially, Logan is very much a lone figure, a kind of corpulent Greta 'I want to be alone' Garbo – and seems to be feeling it, peeved that the ghastly trio were not in attendance at his party.

He cuts a lonely figure in the diner and there's an aura of sadness Cox momentarily brings to this new side of Logan: 'Do you think there's anything after all this . . . I think this is it.' Okay, it's hardly Bambi sobbing for his dead mom, but it's a start.

But it's only a moment and something more akin to King Kong raging through New York City and stopping to put a dime in a homeless man's hat - the tiniest of cracks that Cox's performance always delivers.

In reality, though, Logan has upped the ante with an extra level of vitriol and ill-disguised and increased contempt for his children.

He's returned as King Kong on steroids.

Against the backdrop of a glamorous mansion, vineyard, and sunshine (it never rains in Succession), they've been in heated discussions with PGM CEO Nan Pierce (Cherry Jones, above center) who, with her calm demeanour, seems just a breath away from rigor mortis.

Shiv (above center) on a phone is like Mad Men on acid. Can we go to six? Eight? Is nine and a half our final? Do we need to go to 10? Call Tom. More sums. Jeez. So many figures. So little time. It's like a Math Bee competition.

Then comes the call. 'Congratulations on saying the biggest number, yer f***ing morons.' Oh, dear. Daddy is not happy.

Expressed through an increased barrage of foul language and frightening rage. Sometimes, you feel that the kids are well out of it, though for the most part you hope he'll be adding them to a rabbit stew.

You also know that they'll be back within the fold sooner or later because that's where they belong. Away from the dominating influence of their life, they're not just fish out of water, they're minnows flailing miserably in the jaws of a shark.

Deluded Shiv (please put her in the rabbit stew first. God, she's irritating) is en route to divorce from Tom (Malcolm MacFadyen), which is hardly surprising. Shiv has never hidden her contempt for what she perceived as her husband's weakness and has never been afraid to make it clear that she didn't love him. He gained the upper hand only by betraying her and siding with Logan.

With their marriage hanging by a thread, the little love they have left is well and truly severed in another heart-breaking scene when Shiv returns to the marital home and finds Tom there. And what a home.

But for all their money, couldn't they have found somewhere with an elevator? So many stairs. I worry about such things.

Too tired to leave, they lie on the bed at an angle to each other, and in an exquisitely understated and beautifully acted moment, the death of love is finalized.

'I could see if I could make love to you,' says Tom. Shiv: 'I don't think so, Tom.'

She's probably afraid of her hair being messed up again. Put a hairband on, woman. Your hands seem cemented to your ears.

Tom: 'So this is it, huh?' 'Yeah, yeah. I guess.' They clasp hands, gently. It's a tender goodbye. Shiv: 'Gave it a go.'

Amid the darkness of what feel like Shakespearean undertones, the humor is ever present, not only in the one liners, but Roman's seeming obsession with not only his own but his father's anatomy.

Has there ever been a character more obsessed with saying the word c**k out loud? Does he have Tourette's?

And how I wish you hadn't reminded me of it, Roman.

The parallels with billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch' empire have regularly been drawn, and with Kerry (Zoe Winters) seemingly confirmed as Logan's bit on the side, it seems that fiction continues to mirror truth in other ways.

Last week, 92-year-old Murdoch became engaged to former police chaplain of San Francisco, 66-year-old, Ann Lesley Smith, a veritable spring chicken.

It was hard enough imagining Rupert getting down to business with fourth wife Jerry Hall, and even harder to imagine that an organ that has seen nearly a hundred years is still going.

Amid the darkness of what feel like Shakespearean undertones, the humor is ever present, not only in the one liners, but Roman's (above left) seeming obsession with not only his own but his father's anatomy. 

The best double act in the show is hilarious, and the exchanges between Tom and Logan's great nephew, Greg (Nicholas Braun, above left), make them the Laurel and Hardy of the piece. 

Once it's in your head, it's hard to let go of the picture.

Let's pray we will be saved the gory details with Logan and Kerry.

There are some things best left unseen.

So please, Roman, can you please try to keep your father's dick out of your mouth for one episode, or I'll be sending over Will Smith to give you a slap.

The best double act in the show is hilarious, and the exchanges between Tom and Logan's great nephew, Greg (Nicholas Braun), make them the Laurel and Hardy of the piece.

Now calling themselves 'The Disgusting Brothers', the hapless Greg takes his lead from Tom, even in matters of love. Oh, the irony.

Clearly lying about Greg having been filmed having sex in a private room with his latest squeeze at the party, Tom twists the narrative to ensure the woman leaves – and convinces Greg he should confess to Logan. It's an action guaranteed to fill Logan with contempt for the poor sap.

'A bit of a drug addled sex monster?' says Tom, with faked incredulity, fueling the fire. 'So you blamed it on her? How gallant.'

It's enough to send Greg down the remorse path of Adam in the Garden of Eden, as he scurries off to tell all to Logan, thereby signing his suicide warrant.

At the start of series four, we are promised all of the emotional cannibalism of the first three, with the same spirit of joyous backstabbing that has you rushing to Williams Sonoma to pick up a Wusthof knife block.

The fact that it all takes place against a backdrop of lavish sets and glorious scenery makes the actions of Monsters Inc meets Fraggle Rock all the more comedic.

They don't see any of the beauty in their surroundings or realize how lucky they are because they're so busy chomping at each other's throats.

Oh lord, did I miss this!