It is reasonable to approach MotherFatherSon (BBC2) with an expectation of decorum. This elegant-looking tale of a media dynasty – yes, another, but as it turns out, one that does not quite strike the same tone as Succession – has a killer cast, a contemporary swatch of subjects and scenes where angry men shout at the sky.

Richard Gere is back on television for the first time in decades as the icy, charming media mogul Max Finch; Helen McCrory plays his ex-wife Kathryn, and Billy Howle, in an apt case of nominative determinism, is the troubled son and heir, Caden, who opens proceedings with a guttural scream toward the heavens. Gere has spoken of his attraction to MotherFatherSon’s “Shakespeare-like” qualities, and how he saw some Citizen Kane in Max. Sarah Lancashire is in it; Sinéad Cusack too.

On paper, it smacks of quality and potential. What I didn’t see coming was the extent to which it is, beneath its theatre royalty and expensive suits, completely and utterly cuckoo. It is all such a lot. Gere is perfectly inscrutable as Max, who blasts fear and power into every room he enters, stunning everyone in his radius into temporary paralysis. Max is in London because a general election is imminent. “Are you here to pick a prime minister or deal with your son?” asks Lauren, his Rebekah Brooks-ish right-hand woman. The answer, of course, is both – though the political machinations involve better conversations about biscuits.

He drops in on his newspaper, the National Reporter, left in the resolutely incapable hands of Caden, who gets through the days by snorting enormous amounts of cocaine. He drops in on his news network and tells them how to arrange the chairs to better intimidate interviewees. He is a refined mansplainer – a showboating powermonger, who loves nothing more than to deliver a speech about how much he knows his empire. He drops in on Lancashire’s Angela Howard, the bleeding-heart-liberal leader of the opposition, who says things like, “I don’t plan on breaking [the rules]. I do plan on changing them,” and claims to hear and feel the pain of those suffering in the streets. As kingmaker, Max can elevate her lofty ideals. But those steely eyes suggest he is going to want something in return.

He is less effective when it comes to his personal life. The tension between Caden and Max, hinged on fear, is magnificent, and Caden is now so dead behind the eyes that he is forced to soothe his pain by hiring a sex worker to be part of one of the least erotic and strangest sex scenes I have ever seen on television. Kathryn has been exiled from her aristocratic family and spends her days volunteering in a homeless shelter, perfectly coiffed, where she grows close to one of the residents of an affiliated halfway house. She likes to remember a time when Caden was nice and kind, because Caden has been forced into becoming a Right Bastard by his father. “I was so proud of you,” she says, teary over lunch, when she remembers little Caden asking to stay by the side of a dying seal, so it didn’t take its final breaths alone.

There are plenty of these sorts of moments, where more is more, and highly theatrical melodrama rules. An entire conversation pivots around whether the word “accoutrements” is ever used without reference to steak tartare, hiding a deeper emotional truth, obviously. It is gluttonous and bloated with plot, and it skips around a number of genres, from murder-mystery – there is a phone-hacking-based murder that a retired (and, if the stakes weren’t high enough, also dying) ex-hack decides to investigate as her final job – to political thriller.

Perhaps, though, I should have expected it. Writer Tom Rob Smith worked on American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which is hardly notable for its restraint. And yet, for all of its ridiculousness, I enjoyed MotherFatherSon enormously. It is unabashedly grand and irresistible in its demented excess. It has a Doctor Foster-ish relish for big plot twists. Better still, it doesn’t get any less bizarre. Next week’s episode ends on a note that is so extraordinary – so what-did-I-just-see? – that it has guaranteed at least one series devotee here, if only to find out what trick they could possibly pull next.