A fond farewell to the reckless Roys and the bravura Barry

Succession

Sky Atlantic/Now ★★★★★

Jesse Armstrong’s conclusion to his brilliant creation – soap, satire, Shakespearean tragedy all in one – ranks among the greats. We open with the Roys entrenched on opposite sides of a deal. But the siblings reunite and plan to vote against the deal together with Kendall as CEO. In what is clearly one of the few family traditions, they whiz up in the blender “a meal fit for a king”. It’s a lovely moment. Meanwhile, Matsson makes Tom an offer that changes everything. Shiv, Roman and Kendall make their way to Daddy’s office for the big vote. But greater agony is to come in the third and final act.

The essence of them all is distilled, every loose end tied up, a credible future posited in the final scenes for each. This is Succession at its finest. Lucy Mangan

The Gallows Pole Channel 4 ★★★★★

Benjamin Myers’s 2017 novel The Gallows Pole told the true-life tale of coin clippers led by “King” David Hartley, whose illegal work and attendant violence came to dominate Cragg Vale in West Yorkshire. Shane Meadows’s take on the tale keeps all the energy of the book but adds the missing humour (and women) to give it light and shade. He doesn’t give his characters modern mores – their speech is laced with 18th-century regional terms – but they are not constrained by the genre’s artistic conventions. The script is written by Meadows but, as with all his previous work, the actors have freely improvised. The effect is wonderful. Every one of them feels fresh and completely convincing. It is funny, moving, enraging, shocking by turns and always compelling. Not to be missed. LM

Barry

Sky Comedy/Now ★★★★★

Well, that’s it. The best series on TV has ended. Four seasons and done. Succession? What? No.

I’m talking about Barry. There was only one way that this bitter Hollywood satire – which quickly shook off its slightly hack premise of “Hey, everyone, a hitman wants to become an actor!” – could have ended, and that was with Barry dead. This was a man who has committed more atrocities than almost any other character on screen. These last few weeks have also contained moments of vaulting invention, in keeping with the whole series. It has a highwire ability to mix incredible comedy with the sort of intense drama that leaves your stomach in knots for days. Barry deserves to go down as one of the best of all time. Stuart Heritage

White House Plumbers Sky Atlantic/Now ★★☆☆☆

The Veep showrunner David Mandel directs this A-list, starstuffed, prestige retelling of the Watergate scandal. Over five episodes, it follows the inept misadventures (and that’s putting it lightly) of the Nixon operatives E Howard Hunt and G Gordon Liddy. Lena Headey is Hunt’s wife, Dorothy, at the end of her tether. However, it’s all about Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. Theroux turns the volume up to 11 as Liddy, while Harrelson has more depth to find as Hunt, with a more rounded backstory of family strife. In the end, I found that White House Plumbers didn’t satisfy. It seems to lack a clear identity or a clear sense of what it is. It looks the part, and the talent involved is undeniable, but somehow the chemistry is off and the parts don’t fit together. Rebecca Nicholson