I wonder if the sad I’d be from being without you might be less than the sad I get from being with you? In the end, we’ve been left with just 39 episodes of Succession, but reading through the book of scripts feels like finding a trove of more. Sometimes it’s a scene that didn’t make the cut, like Shiv and Rava passive-aggressively planning a lunch. Sometimes it’s an idea that didn’t make it past infancy in the writers room. (Prebble writes that “for a while there, for a playful couple of hours, we were a show where Tom went to jail.”) Sometimes it’s a proposed song that was excised. (Imagine a version of Succession that contains a “Walking on Sunshine” needledrop, as Armstrong originally proposed to conclude the series’ third episode, rather than Nicholas Britell’s iconic score!)

Brown: I was tasked with researching Tom’s bachelor party at the sex club [for the episode Prague]. Initially it was going to be a full-on sex party, but we decided to make it more grotty. At one point I got an invitation to go to a swingers’ party on a boat along the Hudson River, and it did feel like an insane moment. I was at a gig with Tony and Jesse at Madison Square Garden, then I get an invite to join a waterborne orgy … ‘Probably nobody’s watching it ’: Succession airs Kendall Roy is dealing with fallout from his hostile takeover attempt of Waystar Royco and the heavy guilt from a fatal accident. Shiv stands poised to make her way into the upper-echelons of the company, which is causing complications for Tom, which is causing complications for Greg. Meanwhile, Roman is reacquainting himself with the business by starting at the bottom, as Connor prepares to launch an unlikely bid for president.

Prebble: Someone in New York put on an off-off-Broadway production of Sands, the play which Willa writes in our show. That sort of thing makes you go: this has gone bonkers. If you’re a member of a family like the Roys, it’s like being a royal: you don’t get to leave. You’re addicted to the pain Armstrong: I was keen to get across the correspondence between some of these moguls and authoritarian regimes. I’d been reading a bit about Stalin, and how he would do these dinner parties where he would encourage everyone to get drunk, but he wouldn’t drink. Then he would make horrible jokes to Molotov or whoever about their potential torture or the murder of their colleagues. Roche: I suppose we often thought about it from the media element, but essentially, it’s a family story, and it turns out a lot of people have families, so it’s quite relatable. It is worrying when people say, “Oh, my dad is like Logan,” because you think: “That’s not good.” Tony Roche and Georgia Pritchett on set: ‘This big American drama was written by a group of scruffy, shambolic British comedy writers.’ Succession, season one. Photograph: Colin Hutton/HBO

In the wake of an ambush by his rebellious son, Kendall, Logan Roy is in a perilous position, scrambling to secure familial, political and financial alliances. A bitter corporate battle threatens to turn into a family civil war.In the first episode of Season 2, just before Logan calls Shiv into his office to give her the “slant of light” razzle-dazzle, she spots him making a gesture that would, in most families, be insignificant. Kendall is right there, Armstrong’s script explains. Logan gives him a supportive squeeze on the shoulder. But the Roy family isn’t most families, which is the whole frame around Succession. And so the stage directions continue: Their dad doesn’t touch them much—the sight suddenly and inexplicably enrages Shiv. It shoots a hot bolt of resentment through her heart. Nothing shows though as she heads in. Such is the dense world-building in the series, much of the material that the writers pore over doesn’t even end up making it to TV.