Who knew?
Newspaper barons are gruff, brutal, intimidating men, who wield their considerable financial, political and even physical power to bully others into submission.
That's in Australia of course: they're a bad bunch over there; bereft of a single skerrick of moral fibre, and locked in a vicious battle to crush the opposition and expand their empire.
Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story delves, accurately by all accounts, into the brutal business brouhaha that developed between the media empire of Sir Frank Packer and young up-and-comer Rupert Murdoch.
I don't mean to be disloyal, but Australia really leads the way in regular development of larger-than-life bad eggs.
Chopper Read has nothing on these guys.
We meet Sir Frank Packer as he leaves a party thrown by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, badgering the PM about some grand idea he has for the America's Cup.
We learn he has a soft spot for dogs, and initially get to know what seems like a reasonable sort of fellow.
But no: Sir Frank has learnt Murdoch has bought a company in Sydney he wanted, and it's son Kerry who cops an outburst and is forced to dodge a flying whisky glass.
Rupert - who appears a very decent and reasonable young fellow - is having breakfast in Adelaide when he is summoned to the Packer home in Sydney for tennis.
He is introduced to ''the idiot, Kerry'' Packer by the less than charming Sir Frank, given dinner, and intimidated and threatened by his host.
Worse is to come.
The boys get physical when rivalry over the amusingly named Anglican Press spills over into a street brawl, where Kerry and chums take on some of Rupert's hard men and come off second best.
The Packer-Murdoch Story is a fascinating and entertaining account of the newspaper industry when it was a whole heap more fun than it is today.
It made me want to get back into the fray of print media and plant some knuckles.
Maybe I will.
The show has great period clothing, the sort of cool '60s title sequences of which American graphic designer Saul Bass might have been proud, begins with a song by Petula Clark, and features great acting.
The two-part series begins on Movies Extra on Thursday, March 27, at 8.30pm.
It covers the period between 1960 and 1975, so don't expect anything about News of the World phone hacking, police and government investigations into bribery and corruption, or tweets about Malaysian Airlines.
Do expect a thoroughly good mini-series about a fascinating period of Australian media history.
- Charles Loughrey
