Murdoch rose to power off the back of his father's burgeoning newspaper empire, but didn't in any way ride on his coat-tails. He worked hard. He knew printing. He knew publishing. He knew business. He knew newspapers.

But before he was the ruthless power player we see in the media today, he was a just a young man, arriving in Sydney with no immediate sense of the ferocious competition that awaited as he sought to build a business in the hostile media industry - or so a new television series would have viewers believe.

Murdoch makes his first appearance in the latest addition to the Packer family story, Power Games, which focuses on the power struggle between Frank Packer, his sons Kerry and Clyde, and Murdoch, the young newcomer from Adelaide.

Actor Patrick Brammall, who plays Murdoch, believes this forgotten, youthful man of the 1960s and '70s will open a lot of eyes - the fire is there, but the power is not just yet.

''He's on the way up, he's open and a bit wide-eyed about it,'' Brammall says. ''He's not the guy in the suit of armour that we all know now, surrounded by the money and all that sort of stuff. He's just a very, very switched on and ambitious man at this point.

''He comes across as a fairly mild-mannered guy. In our story, he starts off in Adelaide in 1960 and he gets a call from Sir Frank Packer who says, hey, come and have some lunch with us, play tennis, and Rupert thinks it's a welcome to Sydney, welcome friend. And it's not.''

Murdoch is beaten off the court by two-time Wimbledon doubles winner Adrian Quist as the Packer family watches with glee. But Brammall says Murdoch quickly rebounds to establish himself as a worthy rival.

Up until now much of the focus of a recent run of media-based mini-series has been on the rise of Kerry Packer, as with Howzat! Kerry Packer's War and the two instalments in the Paper Giants series. Brammall's Murdoch is an entirely new character in the story, and an entirely different beast to play compared with Lachy Hulme's portrayal of Kerry Packer in Howzat! and of Sir Frank in Power Games.

One of the biggest challenges for Brammall was knowing that, unlike the Packers, Murdoch is still alive and as powerful as ever.

''It was a big, big job trying to play Rupes within the confines of the story that we were telling,'' he says. ''It's always a big job trying to portray someone who's real, who lives.''

Brammall grew up in Canberra and has played a huge array of roles, from Sean Moody in ABC comedy A Moody Christmas to Kim Beazley in telemovie Hawke. He says there was talk of trying to arrange a meeting with Murdoch before the shooting of Power Games, but it never eventuated.

''I would love to meet him,'' Brammall says. ''I really became a bit of a fan as I got into the role and I would have loved to have met him. I just think he's an interesting guy, and I think very personable. When I did the research, getting into character, I just found he was a very even-handed, charismatic guy. I essentially didn't have any preconceived notions about that, but the more I read about him and listened to him and watched him as a younger man, the more fascinated and compelled I was, and attracted to him I was.

''He seemed like the kind of guy you could get along with very easily, and I think that was one of his great strengths. I would have loved to have met him and asked how he reads the paper. That's actually what I wanted to know more than anything, is when he opens the paper, what does he look at first, where's his eye going, because he's a consummate newspaperman.''

In a touch of irony, Brammall himself comes from a line of consummate newspapermen and women. His father, aunt, uncles, cousin, and grandfather were accomplished Australian journalists. Patrick himself considered following the family path, too, before he turned to acting.

His father, Bruce, has been a senior writer for a number of papers, including The Canberra Times, and was one of the inaugural journalists at Rupert Murdoch's national broadsheet The Australian. Bruce met Murdoch in the 1960s, and knew how he worked, and Patrick says his father quickly emerged as a key contact for his research.

''Dad didn't really bring his work home with him so much, so it's not like we sat around the family table and had political discussions or anything like that, but I was certainly aware of papers and journalism,'' Brammall says.

''I really did lean on him [Bruce] to get this done … I asked dad for detail on how a paper was made in production, from the reporters going out to it actually coming off the press, and he gave me an in-depth [explanation].''

Bruce's stories of Murdoch's micromanagement and hands-on approach integrated seamlessly with Brammall's character, who spends Power Games going from near-naivety to emerging international media magnate during the course of little more than a decade.

The role is the latest in a growing repertoire for the actor, who says he is also working on a comic feature film about strange fetishes called The Little Death, by Australian filmmaker Josh Lawson, as well a number of projects for the ABC.

The first part of Power Games airs on WIN at 8.30pm, Sunday