Netflix's Murdoch Dynasty Documentary Exposes Family Fractured by Business Empire
Life imitates art with striking precision in Netflix's compelling four-part documentary series, Dynasty: The Murdochs. The production places media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former editor Piers Morgan under an intense and revealing spotlight, uncovering the dramatic disintegration of one of the world's most powerful families.
From Fiction to Reality: The Succession Parallels
It is widely acknowledged that HBO's acclaimed family saga Succession drew inspiration from the Murdoch dynasty. The documentary reveals the deliciously meta twist where the real-life clan inadvertently mirrored the fictional drama. In 2023, Elisabeth Murdoch's representative Mark Devereux watched Logan Roy's death on screen and witnessed the ensuing chaos among the fictional heirs. His panic led to a memo intended to prevent the family from replicating the fictional implosion, but instead triggered a real one. This resulted in a bitter court battle and a staggering $3.3 billion settlement for the siblings excluded when Lachlan Murdoch was handed control of Fox and News Corp by his father.
Directed by the acclaimed Liz Garbus, known for her work on Harry & Meghan, the documentary traces Rupert Murdoch's empire-building from its earliest days to that final reckoning. The series cleverly incorporates Succession's dissonant, dizzying theme tune throughout, emphasizing the parallels with its jangling piano and stabbing strings serving as a persistent motif in this slickly produced narrative.
Unprecedented Access and Revelatory Testimonies
The documentary's potency stems from the extraordinary number of individuals who spent decades either working for the Murdochs or chronicling their activities. Although the family declined interviews, the series presents thousands of pages of previously unseen documents, emails, and text messages. These materials paint a portrait of a ruthless patriarch, who turns 95 this week, raising his four eldest children not as a family but as gladiators, pitting them against each other for his affection and his vast empire.
Garbus assembles a formidable lineup of experts from across three continents, including The New York Times journalists Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler, who chronicled the Nevada trust battle, and The Atlantic's McKay Coppins, who secured rare access to James Murdoch. The documentary also features Fleet Street and Australian veterans, along with a cameo from actor Hugh Grant. Grant recalls the difficult period when News of the World reporter Paul McMullan followed him around Los Angeles after the actor's 1995 arrest with sex worker Divine Brown.
Exposing Tabloid Sleaze and Commercial Pressures
The documentary excels in allowing the sleaze and salaciousness of Murdoch's tabloid operations to breathe, giving full rein to the dark arts of journalism. The phone-hacking passages are particularly chilling, with former reporters recalling their methods with palpable relish. McMullan recounts stealing topless photographs of celebrities like Naomi Campbell and Carla Bruni, claiming that then-editor Piers Morgan was thrilled, which secured him a staff job.
Woven into the series is the commercial pressure that made the succession battle so urgent. By 2017, the streaming wars had redrawn the media landscape entirely. Reporter Matthew Belloni notes that Fox lacked the heft to compete with giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. The subsequent Disney sale opened a schism in the family that would never close, representing Rupert's tacit admission that the world had moved faster than he had.
A Pyrrhic Climax and Lasting Legacy
Just as Succession overflowed with sardonic wit and played out like a Jacobean tragedy, so too does Dynasty: The Murdochs. The series unfurls to its pyrrhic climax, with journalist Gabriel Sherman poignantly observing, "Rupert said his dream was to build a family business. What he built was a business that destroyed his family." This documentary surpasses previous accounts, such as the BBC's 2020 series The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, by providing the resolution that earlier portrayals lacked, capturing the full arc of a dynasty torn apart by its own creation.
