The third season finale of HBO’s “Succession” drew 1.7 million viewers, a series high and up 47% from the second season finale. And now it’s won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

At the conclusion of season 2, manipulative billionaire Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the volatile patriarch, was on his yacht watching a live-stream of his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) at a New York press conference, where he’d been sent to publicly take responsibility for a scandal in the cruise-ship division of Waystar Royco, the family’s Fox-like conglomerate. Instead, Kendall viciously shifts the blame to his father.

Decamping to Europe, highlighting Tuscany, season 3 revolves around how Rupert Murdoch-like Logan, his perverse son Roman (Kieran Culkin), politically-ambitious son Connor (Alan Ruck), insecure daughter Siobhan (Sarah Snook) and her sycophantic husband Tom Wamsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) react to Kendall’s betrayal. Plus, there’s gawky, ingenuous Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) and Logan’s consiglieres.

With perilous chaos swirling around them, the Roys now rely on a PR crisis consultant (podcaster-turned-writer/director Dasha Nekrasova) as they cope with various threats, including a major shareholder (Adrien Brody) and a powerful tech mogul (Alexander Skarsgard). 

Creator/showrunner Jesse Armstrong makes these nine episodes incredibly addictive. They’re not only thrilling and dramatic but often laugh-out-loud funny – delivering scabrous, cringe-worthy comedy as the scheming Roys, spewing a lurid barrage of profanity, are propelled by insatiable egos, hurt feelings and whatever illegal drugs they’ve imbibed.  

Focusing on sharply observed family dynamics, all evident as the callous siblings play a game of Monopoly, the basic theme is how tremendous status, wealth and power can’t erase the deep childhood scars of humiliation and abuse which, in turn, erode a person’s sense of humanity.

FYI: After filming in and around Siena, Pienza and Cortona, a pivotal, incredibly opulent family wedding was staged at the 13-bedroom 17^th century Tuscan estate known as Villa Cetinale in Sovicille, a tiny town south of Florence.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Succession: Season 3” is a satirical, suspenseful 9 – streaming on HBO Max and already renewed for a 4th season.

You may recognize Emmy-winner Julia Garner’s face and distinctively nasal voice from “Ozark,” but in the nine episodes of “Inventing Anna” she plays enigmatic grifter Anna Sorokin – a.k.a. Ann Delvey.

For years, brazen Anna passed herself off as the daughter of a German tycoon, gliding through Manhattan’s opulent hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, clad in expensive couture. Posing as an heiress, she cleverly befriended socialites, high-fashion designers and moneyed tech moguls.

Told in flashbacks, manipulative, twentysomething Anna’s mysterious story is being investigated by Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), a whiny, very pregnant writer, desperately trying to restore her tarnished journalistic reputation. 

Encouraged by older colleagues (Anna Devere Smith, Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry) banished to ‘Scriberia,’ Vivian interviews Anna who’s being held – without bail – on Rikers Island, pending trial. 

To research Anna’s background, Vivian stalks former friends, colleagues and gullible victims – like photo editor (Katie Lowes), banker (Alan Reed), fitness trainer (Laverne Cox) and boutique hotel concierge (Alexis Floyd) – plus Anna’s lawyer (Arian Moayed) and boyfriend (Saamer Usmani).

Wrestling with a bizarre Slavic/Germanic accent, Julia Garner infuses Anna with sneering, haughty impatience and glacial indifference. Confident and calculating, Anna converts every conversation into a scamming transaction. In contrast, Anna Chlumsky’s Vivian is awkwardly annoying.

Produced by Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy”), the formulaic, fictionalized series utilizes social media as both a metaphor and narrative device, exploring how influential people use Instagram to hide in plain sight…as the slow-building con stretches on and on and on, repeating the disclaimer: “The whole story is completely true – except for all the parts that are totally made up.

FYI: Jessica Pressler’s “How an Aspiring ‘It’ Girl Tricked New York’s Party People – and its Banks” was published in New York magazine in May, 2018. Currently Anna remains in ICE’s custody, fighting deportation to Germany.  Reportedly, Netflix paid Anna $320,000; in turn, she paid $198,000 in restitution, $24,000 in state taxes and $75,000 in attorney’s fees.

On the Granger Gauge, “Inventing Anna” is a slyly stealthy, swindling 6, streaming on Netflix.

Sometimes Oscar-winners like Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) make massive miscalculations like “The Unforgivable,” based on Sally Wainwright’s critically lauded three-part, 2009 British mini-series.

After Ruth Slater (Bullock) murders Sheriff Mac Whelan (E. Earl Bown), she’s sentenced to prison for 20 years. When she’s released early for good behavior, she’s determined to find her much younger sister Katherine.

In the intervening years, Katherine (Aisling Franciosi), who only remembers fragments of her traumatic childhood, has bonded with the Malcolms, her foster parents (Richard Thomas, Linda Emond) and their biological daughter (Emma Nelson).

When her halfway house in Seattle’s Chinatown turns out to be inhabited by angry ex-cons and the job arranged for her is sabotaged since she’s a ‘cop killer,’ Ruth ends up gutting fish on the night-shift at a seafood packing plant and working during the day transforming an old building into a homeless shelter. 

That’s where she’s predictably befriended by gentle co-worker Blake (Jon Bernthal), who tries to crack through Ruth’s bitter, hardened shell.

Ruth’s strict parole officer (Rob Morgan) prohibits her from associating with known felons or seeking contact with the victim’s family, but the sheriff’s two sons (Tom Guiry, Will Pullen) are determined to wreak vengeance.

Gradually, it’s revealed that the sheriff was trying to evict her, along with then five-year-old Katie, from their family farmhouse. Now, that completely renovated farmhouse is occupied by a sympathetic lawyer, John Ingram (Vincent D’Onofrio), his skeptical wife, Liz (Viola Davis), and their two sons. Over Liz’s objections, John agrees to try to help Ruth locate her estranged sister.

Making her English-language debut, German director Nora Fingscheidt works from an adaptation by Peter Craig, Hillary Seitz and Courtenay Miles to try to tell this bleak ‘second chances’ redemption tale. But the pacing is turgid, lacking urgency, and Sandra Bullock never manages to make the dour and grimly determined Ruth even vaguely likable. The concluding plot twist turns out to be too little too late.

On the Granger Gauge, “The Unforgivable” is a farfetched, forgettable 4, streaming on Netflix.