Succession is a comedy-drama series. So is the new programme on Netflix.

Okay, easy jibe. But still. At the end of another turbulent week at Carlisle United, one matter remains resolutely where it is, to nobody’s great amusement.

And back to it we must return. If we are of the view that Chris Beech’s failings as head coach were only one part of a challenged picture at Brunton Park – and many appear to share that view in the wake of his sacking – we have to keep the mind on this higher business.

The business, you will remember, that was due to be resolved “in a few weeks”, er, a few weeks ago.

Resolution, though, remains as frustratingly elusive as a stream stuck on 53 per cent download. And United’s screen will not dance with new amusements until that finally changes.

The Carlisle United Official Supporters’ Club, the fans’ trust, said on July 25 that “discussions over the next few weeks should bring a conclusion to two years of succession and debt issues.”

Well, a few weeks is now 12 weeks, and considering the last official update from chief executive Nigel Clibbens was that there was “nothing new to report”, we have to conclude that the big picture continues to advance slower than the important detail of the manager situation. CUOSC recently said holidays had stalled things but that the chinwagging was now to resume.

“The same interested individual” is at the table, Clibbens said, on a seat that must be very warm now. Whatever is preventing matters being pressed to a conclusion has not been revealed. So on we go.

One question, incidentally. Why “succession”? The word has slipped neatly and comfortably into the Carlisle United lexicon over the last couple of years. It is now taken as read that “succession” is the desired outcome here.

But why not, you know, “takeover”?

Succession appears the sensitive way of saying the Blues need long-term stewardship for the time when Andrew Jenkins, a director since 1959, is unable to provide such.

And that is fine and fair. But it also puts in the mind’s eye a gradual process, an eventual outcome, rather than the swift and fundamental transformation United need.

Royalty has succession. The Mafia has succession. Does a struggling fourth-tier football club need that, or does it need the impact and overhaul that the t-word more dramatically implies?

Does Carlisle United need a form of staged progress, or does it need total change?

If you asked that question of supporters on their way out of the Memorial Stadium last Saturday and on their way into Brunton Park today, the answer would probably be revealing.

Whatever is on the cards now – and nothing has yet emerged to suggest anything other than interest from Philip Day – the current situation appears the road these owners are set on, to the bitter end.

(Of course, we hope the end isn’t bitter, but this is Carlisle United and you have to be prepared).

Day’s Edinburgh Woollen Mill loaned the Blues more than £2m from 2017. EWM are today no more, and the debt is owed to a linked firm, Purepay Retail Limited. Covid’s impact on the retail business, and the advancement of associated United talks which were moving apace in 2019, cannot be disregarded.

All the same – if a very wealthy man is still interested in being a big part of Carlisle’s future, why are we this far into 2021 and still without resolution?

So far since 2008 this ownership regime have found a number of ways to bring parties to negotiations without concluding a sale.

There was the Andrew Lapping investment plan, eventually gunned down in flames. There was the Robin Brown/CUOSC-led plan which didn’t get far.

There was the ludicrously-prolonged “billionaire” saga, which resulted, hundreds of days on, with the astonishing conclusion that Yahya Kirdi wasn’t quite the right chap to steer the Blues after all.

There were, more recently, the ideas of a business group fronted by former player Chris Lumsdon, and while you cannot blame every one of these scenarios on the board – and they’ve certainly knocked away some bad ideas among these – we remain on a 13-year odyssey that leaves the club stuck with its ageing stadium, its limited facilities and restricted horizons that currently see the National League looming far too closely for comfort.

On the weekend Michael Knighton returned to Carlisle, it’s stark to think that even he was prised out in shorter time than it’s taken these owners to achieve “succession”, once John Courtenay listened to Roddy Collins talking about the stricken Blues and said: “I’ll buy that.”

There was a great deal of wrangling, some luridly public, but come the summer of 2002 it got done. Knighton did not always give the impression of a motivated seller, but United were duly taken over. There was no talk of “succession” there, nor when Fred Story began his positive tenure in 2004.

These are the main questions that hang, still after all this time, regarding anyone in talks: what do you want with Carlisle United, what are your plans, and if it’s taking so darned long, why?

Let us hope against hope the answers are forthcoming long before the laughs fade and this becomes a much darker series.