Dynasty: The Murdochs review – who cares which billionaire will control even more billions?

‘To explain the Murdochs, you have to understand the television show Succession.” So quips New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg a few minutes into this four-part documentary about Rupert Murdoch’s empire – and, specifically, his children’s battle for control of it when he dies.

It’s a canny opener. Jesse Armstrong’s series about media mogul Logan Roy and his warring children, thought to be based on the Murdochs, was a gripping smash hit, and this documentary is soon excitedly matching the eldest Murdoch siblings – independent Prudence from Rupert’s first marriage, dutiful favourite Lachlan, “problem child” James and brilliant but overlooked (pesky X chromosomes!) Elisabeth – to their Succession counterparts. (Rupert’s two younger daughters from his third marriage aren’t in the running.) But don’t be fooled: despite the suspenseful strings and off-key piano motifs, this is no Emmy-award-winning drama. Rather, it is an exhausting if exhaustive rundown of all things Murdoch, with the siblings’ manoeuvrings often the least interesting part. In the documentary, as in life, they are overshadowed by their dad.

In the notable absence of any input from the family, but with astute analysis from longtime Murdoch-profiling journalists, extensive archive material and a brief cameo from Hugh Grant – who calls Rupert “a proper danger to liberal democracies” – we watch Murdoch’s rise to media behemoth and political kingmaker. There are his “populist, right-leaning” revamps of the News of the World and the New York Post, the endorsement of Ronald Reagan – whose deregulation policies, once he was elected, allowed Murdoch to launch the Fox network – and Murdoch’s U-turn when Trump, whom he had reportedly called a “fucking idiot”, looked set to become a king of his own making.

News of the World and Fox News alumni take us into the belly of the beast during their respective phone hacking and sexual harassment scandals, and there are satisfyingly damning stories of the players involved: former News of the World reporter Paul McMullan recounts editor Rebekah Brooks striding through the office, tossing articles in her wake to shouts of: “This is shit. This is shit!” And there are gentler but equally revealing anecdotes: Rupert cheating at family Monopoly; or sitting on the tube in his early career, noting what the “dolly birds” were reading; or ignoring his young children so often that James thought his father was going deaf. There’s also a jaw-dropping claim that Rupert’s second wife, the mother of Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, killed a woman with her car – a story of which there is seemingly no trace.

But, as per the premise, this engaging potted history is intercut (in a confusingly non-chronological way) with succession shenanigans big and small. The biggest is a secret plan by Rupert and Lachlan to change a family trust, nullifying the siblings’ equal voting rights in the business after Rupert’s death, thus giving Lachlan control. At its heart, Project Family Harmony, as the pair call it (surely a nod to Succession’s dark comedy? Nobody is that unhinged), is about keeping the business operating in the interests of conservative politics, and stopping the more liberal James pulling it leftwards – a revelation that brings into bleak focus the very real and global consequences of this highly personal spat. The lawsuit that ensues, meanwhile, lays bare Rupert’s ruthlessness: as his lawyer grills James, Rupert feeds him questions to ask in real time. Questions such as: “Have you ever accomplished anything on your own?” and, “Why were you too busy to call your dad on his 90th birthday?”

Far less interesting is the endless recounting of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James’s career moves (Prudence, we learn early on, has no interest in empire-running). It’s a depressing catalogue of nepotism – Lachlan is running his dad’s Queensland newspapers by 22, for example – that thrusts them in and out of the “most likely successor” spot ad nauseam, without ever letting us get to know the people behind the promotions. The use of an animated board game, which sees figurines of the siblings land on squares such as “Go and work for dad” or “You are the subject of an investigation, lose a turn”, fails to dial up the interest. What it does do, however, is remind us once again who is in control: if one of the siblings tries to leave the game and strike out on their own, that omnipotent figure offers them a new job or buys the company they’ve founded, and plonks them back on the board.

In the end, it’s this lack of agency that makes the show’s “real-life Succession” spin a tough sell. It’s hard to care about which billionaire will gain control of yet more billions, but especially hard when the outcome feels like a foregone conclusion (even if you didn’t follow the battle in the news). Because, really, how often does Rupert Murdoch not get what he wants?

• Dynasty: The Murdochs is on Netflix now