“The Murdochs” is a messier “Succession”

Quoting what may be Russian literature’s most famous line is a little trite, I’ll admit. Since we’re talking about “Dynasty: The Murdochs,” I’m going to chance it anyway, because I doubt Leo Tolstoy could have conceived of the Murdochs when he wrote, “each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way,” any more than he could have mapped out the Roys’ arc on “Succession.”

Hell, most Old Testament patriarchs aren’t as demanding of loyalty and filial supplication as Rupert Murdoch, save for God himself. We know this because the Murdochs’ family squabbles spilled into the news, late-night monologues and the figurative streets of social media at the height of their struggles. The public eagerly took it all in because the Murdochs are one of the richest families on the planet, and one of the most easily detestable, led by a man who shapes the political discourse and Western democracy in ways that best suit his empire’s bottom line.

“Succession” was incredible, but watching life both imitate and build on its art was better. And as filmmaker Liz Garbus consistently underlines throughout “Dynasty: The Murdochs,” their unhappiness is singular because it is spectacular.

Garbus’ four-part docuseries exposes the family’s noxious dynamics to the klieg lights of public judgment, offering reportorial context to their expansive influence. But it also quite consciously plays to the baser side of us that takes cold comfort, even joy, at the miseries of the hyperwealthy.

“The Murdochs” debuted the same week that Rupert turned 95 and a couple of years after he officially stepped down from running Fox News, an occasion marked in many news outlets by commemorative appraisals doubling as eulogies.

Few of those dig into the guts of the relationships between Rupert’s eldest children — Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth, James, and Lachlan, the real-life inspirations for Connor, Shiv, Roman and Kendall Roy — as extensively as Garbus does here. None do so as nimbly.

Garbus’ invocation of Aaron Spelling’s prime-time soap in her title can’t be accidental. Even if it were, the linkage implies that “Dynasty: The Murdochs” doesn’t settle for simply being informative. It bursts with insights that mix journalistic acumen with gossip, backed by a score generously seasoned with mischievous violin string plucking. The Murdochs declined to participate, but decades’ worth of archival footage gives Garbus plenty to sculpt.

As the filmmaker does in her 2022 Netflix blockbuster “Harry & Meghan,” Garbus is taking a side. This time it’s the audience’s, not her subject’s. “Dynasty: The Murdochs” exists because the Murdochs’ family drama played out on the world’s stage, and Fox News’ impact on our political and social fabric has stakes for all of us, the little people. But it’s also a solid piece of entertainment that isn’t shy about making the family’s frequently painful dynamics queasily diverting.

The Murdoch children didn’t ask to be born into this family, but they were forced to choose between relative anonymity and world domination, with their father playing each off the other to secure his love and respect. Prudence chose the former, and the rest chose strife.

“Succession” got that part right more than we knew. When Rupert’s children watched its too-close-for-comfort version of the chaos following Logan Roy’s sudden death, they leapt to nail down their family’s succession plan before it was too late. This provocation sets the narrative in motion, framed by Garbus’ choice to illustrate the children’s ambitions by animating them as pieces on a game board modeled after Monopoly.

If this were a different family, and if we existed in another version of this world, “Dynasty: The Murdochs” might strike us as a tragedy. Time and again, Garbus and her experts’ perspectives responsibly remind us that we’re watching a father shatter the bonds between his children. But this same factor, combined with Rupert Murdoch’s leading role in distorting the public’s relationships with facts and truth, makes it easier to view all this from a distance.

Extensive coverage and leaked deposition documents spelling out the details of the family’s trust, which determined the fate of Fox News, primed people to pick sides in an internecine feud that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. If you didn’t read about it in the news, you might have laughed at Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, or a correspondent on “The Daily Show” joking about it. That Garbus shuffles late-night bits into the action punctuates the blur of corporate interests and celebrity that the Murdochs represent.

They are among a handful of families who have democracy in a stranglehold, and whose moods and whims inform decisions with society-shifting consequences. A scene that best distills this shows Ivanka Trump arranging a meeting that leads to her father seeking Rupert Murdoch’s support for his first presidential run. When Murdoch withholds his blessing, Donald Trump wields his reputation as a successful businessman to steal viewers from Fox, forcing the titan to get on board with the Trumps instead of the other way around.

Many inches of copy have been devoted to Trump’s strained relationship with his father, Fred, and his frosty relationships with his children — aside from Ivanka, to whom he may seem too close —  to explain his heartlessness toward anybody who isn’t him.

Trump absorbed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into his celebrity-stocked cabinet, a man who used his clan’s political reputation to sow conspiracy theories as plausible, and mainstream vaccination resistance before he was placed in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. That his own family disavows him only made RFK Jr. more palatable to the MAGA base. His rise to office may have curbed our craving for more of his relatives, however. The announcement that John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, plans to run for an open seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District prompted The Atlantic to respond with a headline begging, “Please, Not Another Kennedy.”

Another friend of the Trumps, David Ellison and his father, Larry, acquired Paramount and swiftly set about destroying CBS News’ legacy, a brand that minted icons such as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Currently, the Ellisons are on the verge of taking over Warner Bros., the parent company of CNN and HBO. Does Larry Ellison love his son? Does it matter?

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There was a time when the public picked a team in the Murdoch family’s squabble. Prudence, Elisabeth and James supposedly wanted to temper Fox News’ reactionary lean, while Lachlan desired to keep Fox News exactly as his father and his late right-hand man, Roger Ailes, had shaped it.

In the end, Lachlan received the long-sought kiss from daddy while James discovered, through an assortment of leaks, how much his mother and father couldn’t stomach him. How unfortunate. Also, how much is this family worth after all that? Forbes places its current estimate in the ballpark of $22.6 billion.

For all the emotional and psychological detail like this spilled in “Dynasty: The Murdochs,” it doesn’t make a play for our sympathies or leave us feeling any particular way about these people. What struck me instead is how ably Garbus presents what Rupert Murdoch and men like him have wrought as not just a blight on society but a pox on all our houses, including his own. The right’s parasocial relationship with such families keeps them in business because it profits them for some of the smallfolk to believe they share our frailties, or that we might become one of them someday. After all, a multibillion-dollar net worth pays for plenty of therapy.

“Dynasty: The Murdochs” is streaming on Netflix.

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