Now that we've had time to digest the two “definitive” episodes of Murdoch – the documentary shown on Australia’s SBS over consecutive Sundays – a moment to ponder what it was all about.

Not what the fuss was all about… there wasn’t any, and even I managed to miss the live broadcast in favour of something more contemporary. Probably The Voice.

For contemporary, Murdoch was not.

It presented like a over-ripe obituary, whose subject had defied broadcasters by living until the content was mostly stale.

The blurb says, “Friends, rivals, colleagues past and present – and the odd former prime minister – reveal how Rupert Murdoch built his global empire, starting with a single newspaper in 1950s Australia”.

But it doesn’t actually reveal anything: Many of the interviews were 15 years old and tended – with the exception of Murdoch himself – to refer to the subject in the past tense.

Vision was conspicuously lacking: The first episode cut in generic footage of knockabout westerns, while the second relied mostly cityscapes, views ferries and of the News Corporation headquarters, cut in with newsreel footage.

Yes, the Anglican Press incident – in which the young Packer brothers were caught on camera – still raises a chuckle, and formed a substantial part of the Paper Man drama more than a decade ago. Against that, big chunks of the story – fundamentals of UK pay TV growth, and the ‘we are where we are’ financial trauma, for example – were missing.

Many of those who contributed had an axe to grind, and many more were kicking themselves for letting Murdoch take over their lives and wondering what they might have done about it.

Above all, despite the captioned contributors, an anonymous voice-over tells the story as it sees it. The doco was written and produced by Janet Sutherland, whose main writing credit previously appears to have been for Diana: The witnesses in the tunnel. It was funded by government-backed Screen Australia and part of a $1.9 million programme which included other work.

You can’t help wondering whether the Australian government – frequently under fire from the Murdoch press – got value for its money.

At least one episode is still on the SBS website if you want to catch up.

Peter Coleman