House of Hancock review: Legal action proves a magnet to mini-series finale

But the show would have been best served by another warning: "This program is based on real people you would hope never to meet and real events you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy."

Not having seen the unedited version, it's impossible to judge just how much sway the Rinehart legal expedition last week forced unflattering material to the cutting-room floor. But if what we did see was considered passable, it gives you some idea of just how distorted this warring family's concept of the common mindset has become.

Bearing little resemblance to anything you'd expect to find even in fiction, and no resemblance to anything you would expect to encounter in real life, the based-on-horrifying-fact House of Hancock was compelling television - and a blowout for the reputation of everyone depicted within.

You could, if you tried very hard, mine the valiant portrayals of duelling anti-heroines Gina Rinehart and Rose Porteous for grains of sympathy. There were skerricks to be found, a credit to the casting of the prosthetic-laden Mandy McElhinney as Gina and Peta Sergeant as Rose - both at times heroic in thankless roles.

Both managed to imbue their real-life counterparts with some sense of having turned into the older women they became as a result of contact with their respective father and husband - the crude, bigoted billionaire Lang Hancock, who deserved less than being made marginally sympathetic by the great Sam Neill.

The story is well known, if still unbelievable in its basics. Man rapes land for riches; man trains daughter as heiress to the billions; man marries maid; maid makes good; man dies; man's daughter paints maid as a murderer; man's grandkids look at the mess left behind and ask: WTF? And much else besides.

That Gina Rinehart has lost touch with even the upper realms of the country of which she proclaims herself a heroine - the middle and lower realms long forgotten - House of Hancock provided a helpful reminder.

It closed with her notorious 2012 remarks that included this remonstration of the poor: "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

This is enough to suggest Rinehart has spent some, if not enough, time pondering economic concepts, and even less considering another more recent theory - "The Streisand Effect". So named in honour of the singer's backfired legal attempts to suppress photographs of her Malibu estate in 2003, the Streisand Effect describes what happens when "an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicising the information more widely" - as Wikipedia defines it.

With vast experience of courtrooms, this is a factor that surely should have occurred to anyone in the Hancock-Rinehart-Porteous clan thinking of shutting down the final episode of House of Hancock.

Yes, there was a disclaimer at the start. Yes, there were some edits. But no, it didn't work. No doubt, even more people watched. And no doubt, no one came away anything short of appalled.