The story of the Roy family will end this spring with Season 4.

So says “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong to Rebecca Mead in the New York, online tonight.

HBO’s premier drama will run just 10 more episodes as the adult Roy children try finally to succeed their father in business.

It’s interesting that Armstrong made the announcement and not HBO, which understandably probably wanted a couple more seasons. “Succession” is their biggest hit drama since “The Sopranos.”

Armstrong is very British about why it’s time to wind things up, but there is undoubtedly a money story lurking in the background. The new people at Warner Bros, aka Warner Discovery, are cancelling shows, laying off employees, and living with constant trouble at CNN. If the “Succession” cast needed to renegotiate pay, David Zaslav likely said “nah.” Just a feeling.

So what will happen to Shiv, Tom, Kendall, Roman, Connor, Cousin Greg et al? Will they beat the old man (Logan Roy played by Brian Cox)? Will Logan die? Will Brian Cox keep doing McDonald’s commercials? We’ll have to wait and see.

“Succession” in three seasons earned its stripes as as a psychological thriller, a mental chess game of the highest order, and the most- talkingest show of all time, beating “Moonlighting” and “Gilmore Girls.” You actually need captions and a Xanax at the end of each episode.

Ten episodes begin on March 26th. The finale will come in June. HBO will weep when this is over. But they always have something new up their sleeves!

Tonight’s episode of “Law & Order SVU” was directed by star Mariska Hargitay.

At the end of the show there was a card dedicating the episode to Richard Belzer, who died this week and played Det. John Munch for 15 seasons.

There was another tribute, too. Guest star Bradley Whitford said to Hargitay’s Olivia Benson as she left his hospital room: You have an ass like the devil and a face like Jayne Mansfield.”

Screen siren Jayne Mansfield was Hargitay’s mother in real life. She died in a terrible car accident in June 1967 in New Orleans. She was just 33. She would be so proud of Mariska, now in her 23rd season of “SVU” and NBC’s biggest star.

“An ass like the devil and a face like Jayne Mansfield.” #SVU pic.twitter.com/bpzT03GWGg

— mel | (the chris) meloni project (@MeloniProject) February 24, 2023

I know, you’re thinking, who cares about The Bachelor on ABC?

But the show and its counterpart, The Bachelorette, have become an industry, and staples on the network since 2002. Yes, two thousand two.

I wrote yesterday about how totally insipid the already fairly low IQ show has become. On Monday night’s episode, the guy who is the Bachelor came down with COVID in London. The 20 or so young women who were all “in love” with him didn’t care if he was sick. They wanted to win. They wanted the final rose, the engagement ring, and publicity. It was a hilarious disaster.

More importantly, Monday’s show also had the lowest number of total viewers in 22 years: 2.8 million. Two years this week, “The Bachelor” scored 5.3 million viewers. That’s nearly 50% less.

That season, the season average was 5.5 million. This season so far the average is 2.3 million — and it’s not going to improve.

The rose is wilting, and almost dead. The bloom is off the rose. As this season sinks into ignominy, it may be time to wrap this enterprise up. “The Bachelor” has outlived whatever usefulness it had. The novelty of seeing stupid, shiny, inarticulate, somewhat illiterate people trying to fall in love instantly has lost its juice. In syndication, it would be a hit. But taking up precious prime time real estate? Enough.

Another issue besides boredom is that “The Bachelor” lost its mojo after host Chris Harrison was pushed out. He got tongue tied into a mess when a recent winner, who was Black, asked him “Extra” about a female contestant who’d attended parties on a Southern plantation. Harrison, ill-equipped to deal with this, defended the young woman and plantations. And he was gone after just under two decades. (Note: the plantation girl ultimately got engaged to her Black suitor, who forgave her. You can’t make this stuff up.)

ABC already moved “Dancing with the Stars” off to streaming. “The Bachelor” is next.

The people who watch HBO’s “The Last of Us,” love it. It’s a water cooler show even though no one’s in an office and there are no water coolers. But you get my drift!

Still. “The Last of Us” is having trouble getting a consistent audience. On the HBO linear channel at 9pm this week, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey somehow got from Boston to Texas to find Joel’s brother and his wife (Gabriel Luna and Rutina Wesley). Total viewers was 841,000.

The prior week, the numbers dropped to just 382,000. But that was because of the Super Bowl, which had 110 million fans tuned in. Whether fans found “Last of Us” on delayed viewing we don’t know. The prior week, before the Super Bowl, was way up to 991,000. So the Super Bowl did manage to dent the show’s ratings.

One reason for all this may be the lack of regular supporting players. From week to week, Joel and Ellie travel around and meet various new people. Often those people wind up dead at the end of the episode. There’s no secondary story line, so there’s no one else for the audience to attach themselves to. When awards time comes, no one will be eligible for supporting actor nominations. Just lots of guest actors.

In a strange way, “Last of Us” has turned into an anthology show, much like the other beloved new show, “Poker Face.” Difference is the latter is streaming only, so there are no ratings. But I’m sure there are millions coming from HBO Max for “Last of Us.”

Meantime, some of us are hooked.

I’m a huge fan of Angela Davis, the great activist and educator. I was honored to sit at her table at a lunch for a documentary about her a few years ago. We discussed how she became a target for the right back in the 60s. She was never part of the Black Panthers. But her image became entwined with theirs. She was a young trailblazer.

Tonight on “Finding Your Roots” with Dr. Henry Louis Gates on PBS, Davis learned something very surprising: she is descended from the families who came to America on the Mayflower. Shut the front door, as they say! The clip is below.

Gates is a hero with this Ancestry show. All kinds of people have learned all kinds of things sitting across from him. But this is the ultimate irony. Angela Davis is an OG American. She was always a patriot who questioned what direction this country was going in. The most American thing is to be an activist. This country owes her an apology for the way she was treated in the 60s and 70s.

Watch this. Irony is so hilarious.

“Do you know what you’re looking at? That is a list of the passengers on the Mayflower.”

Our researchers discovered #AngelaDavis’s ancestors traveled to the US on the Mayflower and here is her reaction. #FindingYourRoots pic.twitter.com/G2HhA9BSrT

— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) February 22, 2023