There’s an ageing, ailing patriarch at the head of an embattled family-owned business empire. He has several adult children and there are tensions and resentments between them, partly to do with control of the company, but also relating to who’s perceived to be their father’s favourite child.

The most likely successor to run the company is a weak man prone to bad judgment. There’s also a loose-cannon son who goes his own, sometimes self-destructive, way. The smartest and strongest of the siblings is the sole sister, but she’s unlikely to assume the top job because she’s a woman.

Sound familiar? But, no, these aren’t the Roys: meet the Wolfsons. Rather than private-jetting to company retreats in Hungarian hunting lodges or cruising the Mediterranean on luxury yachts, the Wolfsons rarely move beyond their insular orthodox Jewish community in the Belgian city of Antwerp. And in that international hub of the diamond trade, Wolfson Diamonds has been a formidable force, although the gem trade and the company have seen better and more profitable days. The firm is in trouble: ill-judged decisions have rendered it vulnerable and now there’s an urgency about the need to set a new course to try to save it.

While the Wolfsons deal in diamonds and not TV networks, amusement parks or cruises, the similarities between Succession (Binge, Foxtel) and Rough Diamonds (Netflix) are striking. And they underline the timeless and universal fascination with stories about wealthy, messed-up families and their problems, and particularly with how they wrestle with issues of power, influence and inheritance.

An Israeli-Belgian co-production, Rough Diamonds is directed by Cecilia Verheyden and was created by Rotem Shamir and Yuval Yefet, who met while working on Fauda (Netflix) and have since collaborated on Line in the Sand (Paramount+). The eight-part series resembles an intriguing mix of Succession, the Israeli domestic drama series, Shtisel, and a Euro crime thriller. Like Shtisel, Rough Diamonds presents a carefully detailed evocation of the rites, rituals and values of a tightly-knit Hasidic community. The thriller element is injected because, as a consequence of various unfortunate decisions, a band of Albanian gangsters is lurking with dangerous intent around the Wolfsons. In addition, a dogged local prosecutor, Jo Smets (Els Dottermans), is gathering information on what she suspects is the dark underbelly of the diamond trade, as well as on the Albanian criminals who finance some of its operations.

As the series begins, Noah (Kevin Janssens), the black-sheep son, comes home for the funeral of his younger brother. Noah left Antwerp 15 years earlier, abandoning his family and his faith for a different life. He returns for what he imagines will be a brief visit, but finds his loved ones and their company in crisis. Noah’s self-righteous, weak-willed brother, Eli (Robbie Cleiren), has assumed control of the empire as their revered though frail “tateh” (Dudu Fisher) contends with health issues. Dignified and devout Adina (Ini Massez) looks on in despair as the company teeters and her nearest and dearest lurch from crisis to crisis.

Loading

As in Succession, a lot of time is spent with people in rooms talking, jockeying for better positions in business deals, and superior status in the family pecking order. Here, though, the negotiations extend to marriage-broking, which is depicted as a process akin to engineering mutually beneficial mergers.