There has long been a kind of parallel identity to HBO’s original programming that ran hand-in-hand with each other. HBO is the place for the can’t miss shows you’ll be talking about all week, is the first track. HBO is the place for quality television, is the second. The former was a track forged by the likes of Sex and the City, The Sopranos and has continued with Game of Thrones (and, in more limited stretches, Big Little Lies, Veep, True Detective, Westworld, or The Jinx). The latter group has been the bulk of HBO originals, from The Wire to Six Feet Under to Deadwood to Enlightened to current shows like Silicon Valley and Barry. One track has always depended on the other to keep that HBO brand strong. Whenever anyone mentioned that comparatively very few people ever watched that second group of shows, you just had to point to a Sopranos or a Game of Thrones to prove that HBO still had the shows everybody was watching on Sunday nights. And whenever anyone scoffed that HBO’s subscriptions were hanging on people who only stuck around for one particular zeitgeist-y show, all you had to do was point out that second group to prove HBO’s deep reserves of quality TV.

It’s when one or more of that first group of shows is ending that the second group begins to seem insufficient. With Game of Thrones reaching its endpoint (and with Veep taking an extended hiatus this year), the pressure has been on HBO to mint another broadly appealing hit. Westworld is forever almost there, but too few people agree on the kind of show they enjoy it best as. So now everything that premieres either has to be the next network-defining thing or else it’s time to seek something else.

Which is kind of what happened to Succession, which premiered two months ago with a so-so episode (the plague of good TV shows with bad pilots is worthy of its own fund-raising telethon) about a family-owned media empire and the scramble for power that takes place when the Rupert Murdoch-esque bastard of a patriarch nearly dies. Created by Jesse Armstrong, the show boasts sterling behind the scenes credits — episodes directed by the likes of Adam McKay and Adam Arkin; an A+ score by Moonlight composer Nicholas Britell — and makes the ugly dregs of the financial district look positively picturesque. That said, with a cast full of despicable characters each making every effort to make an impression with their awfulness, the first episode of Succession bored some and actively repulsed others. Not a super great combination, that.

The good news is that if you slept on Succession for a few weeks and then watched the first 3-4 episodes in a weekend, say, you probably got the best possible experience of the show. The pilot takes forever to get where it’s going — Brian Cox as patriarch Logan Roy has a stroke near the end of the episode — and the unpleasantness of the characters doesn’t settle into the darkly comedic tone that the show does best until episodes 2 and 3. Sticking around at least that long is important, because that’s about when the wild-and-weirdness of the show really begins to sink in.

Besides Brian Cox doing that thing he’s really good at — bellowing at everybody in a most terrifying way — the supporting cast manages to toe that scumbag/infuriatingly-compelling line quite well. Has Jeremy Strong ever played a character you were supposed to like outright? (Don’t say The Judge; The Judge doesn’t count.) Between The Big Short, Molly’s Game, and now Succession, Strong has made a decent living out of playing moneyed jackasses who you can’t seem to stop watching. He plays the most ambitious of the Roy children, Kendall, a recovering addict who has replaced his substance abuse with a permanent vibe of quaking fear. After his dad reverses his plans to hand the business over to Kendall in episode 1, Kendall spends the rest of the series trying to maneuver it out from under Logan while his dad is in various degrees of incapacitation. That Logan is a bastard of the highest order — and that Kendall’s siblings are terrible to him at all times — maybe makes Kendall the de facto protagonist, but it doesn’t make him likeable either. No one liking him is part of his character. With no small degree of perversity, the only time Kendall is remotely confident or likeable is when he falls off the wagon, gets high on meth, and tells his father where he can get off.

The rest of the Roy clan are much more straightforwardly awful. Middle sibling Roman (Kieran Culkin) is a brat of the highest order, a womanizer and party kid who knows exactly how little he’s qualified to run any part of his dad’s business and yet is offended anew any time anyone brings this up or attempts to assign him supervision. He’s fully aware of his own maddening appeal (“I look like a matador, and everyone wants to fuck me”), and what’s most maddening of all is that he’s right. He gets all the best lines, and he delivers him like a total cock, and I can’t wait for him to show up in a scene.

Everything you need to know about Succession lies in the fact that the youngest Roy, daughter Siobahn (Sarah Snook), is called “Shiv,” which is an incredibly obnoxious shorthand to let you know that she too, despite her beauty, is willing to backstab at will. Shiv works in politics, which puts her at odds with her dad’s business most often, but the best part of her character is that she’s engaged to Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), who is the absolute strangest and most entertaining character on the show. What is Tom’s deal??? Is he being obsequious for show? Is he working Shiv in order to get in with the family? He’s clearly (and hilariously) territorial with anyone newer to the Roy inner circle than he is; he bares his teeth at both cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) and eldest son Connor Roy’s mistress Willa (Justine Lupe). But he’s also a complete fool and (seemingly) no match for Shiv in any way. He’s a rube, but I’d never turn my back on him, mostly because Macfadyen is so goddamn entertaining in the role.

The Roys are surrounded by a rogue’s gallery of company lawyers, business allies/enemies, and extended family that give the show an excellent opportunity to filter in some great recurring players. I’ve been most delighted by J. Smith Cameron as Waystar Royco’s in-house counsel, James Cromwell as Logan’s embittered and estranged brother, and Arian Moayed as Kendall’s close friend and business associate who also clearly hates him.

It’s a pit of vipers on Succession, but the show is written with such a light touch and has such fun with these characters without either endorsing them nor — crucially, I’d say — feeling the need to pile on and up the ante with bad, illegal behavior. These aren’t (so far) murderers or rapists up to anything extraordinary criminal. It’s in the very ordinary-ness of their vanity, greed, and paranoia that the Roy family represents the worst of us. That maybe doesn’t sound like the most diverting brand of television in these troubled times, but despite how much Waystar Royco seems to be modeled after NewsCorp and how often the show brushes up against real-world issues, Succession still feels like an escape, and a satisfyingly funny one at that.

And best of all, people still seem to be sleeping on Succession. My guess is that won’t last. It’ll be that kind of show where people catch up on it between seasons, and by year two, enthusiasm will have accrued. Don’t get left behind like a sucker.

Where to stream Succession