Directed by the acclaimed Liz Garbus \u2013 whose credits include Harry & Meghan<\/a> \u2013 Netflix<\/a>\u2019s new four-part documentary Dynasty: The Murdochs follows the story from Rupert\u2019s earliest empire-building to that final reckoning. And as if to really ram the parallels home, tinkling through it all is Succession\u2019s own dissonant, dizzying theme tune, with its jangling piano and stabbing strings, a persistent motif in a film that is slickly produced and gleefully told.<\/p>\n Central to the sit-up-and-watch potency of Dynasty is the extraordinary number of people who spent decades either working for the Murdochs or writing about them (the family declined to be interviewed). Thousands of pages of documents, emails and text messages never before seen on TV paint a portrait of a ruthless patriarch \u2013 recently turned 95 \u2013 who raised his four eldest children less as a family than as gladiators, pitting them against each other for his affection and his empire. <\/p>\n From across three continents, Garbus assembles a formidable bench: The New York Times\u2019s Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler, the definitive chroniclers of the Nevada trust battle; The Atlantic\u2019s McKay Coppins, who secured rare access to James Murdoch; and a slew of Fleet Street and Australian veterans. There is even a cameo from Hugh Grant, who was followed around Los Angeles by a News of the World reporter, Paul McMullan, during the paper\u2019s dark arts heyday after the actor had been arrested for being caught with sex worker Divine Brown in 1995. \u201cWhat did Murdoch want us to do? Find the girl, give her $250,000 to tell us all about what Hugh Grant asked you to do in his car,\u201d recalls McMullan. \u201cLife at that time was extremely difficult,\u201d remembers the actor. <\/p>\n Up until now, the most complete telling had been the BBC\u2019s three-part series The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty from 2020. Meticulously researched though it was, it arrived too early, its drama feeling strangely remote, belonging to a time when Rupert\u2019s empire, for all its scandals, remained intact. Garbus\u2019s account has what that lacked: resolution.<\/p>\n What she does particularly well is to let the sleaze breathe, the salaciousness running through Murdoch\u2019s tabloid operation given full rein. The phone-hacking passages are chilling as former reporters recall their methods with palpable relish. \u201cOne day I turned up with those stolen photographs,\u201d says McMullan, naming Naomi Campbell<\/a> and Carla Bruni among his topless subjects. The then editor, Piers Morgan<\/a>, was thrilled, he claims. \u201cOn the basis of that, I got my staff job for stealing, basically.\u201d <\/p>\n![\"Family](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-118878991.jpeg\")
Family business: the documentary series comes as the Murdochs are falling apart (Getty)<\/p>\n