When Rupert Murdoch arrived in London’s Fleet Street, the heart of the UK’s newspaper industry, in 1968, no one knew who this Australian newspaper executive was or what he wanted. It didn’t stay that way for long.

David tells the story of meeting Murdoch for the first time, interviewing him for the BBC about his ambitions and motivations. Talking to journalists David Banks and Roy Greenslade, as well as art director Vic Giles, he explores how Murdoch transformed The Sun from a low selling broadsheet into a populist tabloid behemoth. Murdoch’s approach to The Sun would be the bedrock of his business strategy for the next 50 years.

Rupert Murdoch buys America’s oldest newspaper: The New York Post. In 1970s New York crime was rife, social strife played out on the streets and - in the summer of 1977 - a 24-hour blackout caused looting across the city. When a serial killer, known as the “Son of Sam”, starts stalking Brooklyn’s teenagers, Murdoch turns to his star reporter – Australian Steve Dunleavy.

In this episode, Steve Dunleavy recounts the events of that long hot summer. Can Dunleavy’s reporting help Murdoch make a success of his latest acquisition and establish his empire in the US? We spoke to Dunleavy for this series just a few months before he died in June this year at the age of 81.

By the mid 1980s Rupert Murdoch owned four powerful British newspapers, presided over a longstanding media empire in Australia and was expanding from newspapers into television in the US. But he had a problem - the British print unions, who were limiting his potential for growth. So Murdoch decided to pull off perhaps his most daring move yet.

Through interviews with some of the main players David tells the inside story of how Murdoch carried out a top secret plan to destroy the unions and transform the staid, old fashioned world of the British newspaper industry forever. He talks to David Banks – the man who led Murdoch’s operation inside the Wapping factory – and who tells his story here for the first time. He also speaks to Paul King – a printer on the front lines of Murdoch’s fight against the unions. And to Linda Melvern, the investigative journalist who broke the story of Murdoch’s plan.

How has Rupert Murdoch used his media empire to influence the political world? It all goes back to a secret meeting in 1981 between Murdoch and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. David talks to Harry Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times and The Times, about what happened at that meeting. From Murdoch’s relationship with Thatcher to his courting of Tony Blair and David Cameron, he tries to get to the bottom of how and why Murdoch has seemingly sought out political influence. Is he motivated by ideology, power or is it simply good business?

He talks to David Yelland, editor of The Sun when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, about how political influence actually works and explores what impact Murdoch’s newspapers have had our culture and society as well as on individuals. We’ll hear from Sharon Shoesmith, former director of Haringey Children’s Services, who found herself at the centre of a tabloid media firestorm over the Baby P affair in 2008.

By the end of the 2000s Murdoch’s empire in the UK seemed impregnable. But, as Murdoch knew so well, the problem if you are an establishment is there will always be someone trying to bring you down. And at the heart of Murdoch’s operation was a secret very few knew about. It involved celebrity sex lives, journalistic surveillance and Prince William’s kneecap. It would take a crusading journalist and a provincial lawyer to expose it, almost bringing Murdoch’s business to its knees and leaving him facing his “most humble day”.

David talks to the people right at the heart of this story: Nick Davies – the journalist who exposed the phone hacking scandal, Mark Lewis – the lawyer whose case against the News Of The World lit the fuse that would eventually lead to Murdoch closing the paper down, and Dan Evans – the phone hacker extraordinaire who ended up turning against his old colleagues.

A decade after Murdoch’s "most humble day", many believe he’s now more powerful than ever. In the final episode of the series, David tells the story of the birth of Fox News. The channel’s first president, Joe Peyronnin, helps explain how Murdoch, alongside Fox Chief Executive Roger Ailes, went about reshaping the landscape of American television news. In doing so they laid the groundwork for the transformation of the Republican party and the election of an American president made famous on Fox – Donald J. Trump.

This special bonus episodes tries to get at some of the questions the series leaves unanswered like: Where does Murdoch’s insatiable business drive come from? How can we separate his admirable qualities from his more ruthless pursuit of power? And what was it like for David Dimbleby to do a podcast?

Playwright James Graham, writer of Ink, joins David Dimbleby in a live panel discussion from The Barbican in London celebrating the launch of The Sun King.

Hosted by the Guardian journalist Miranda Sawyer they discuss Murdoch’s motivations, his media strategy and the rise of fake news and disinformation.