When law professor Tal (Grantham Coleman) enters his childhood home ahead of his father’s funeral, his young son Bentley (Dyllan Yelverton) turns to him with curiosity. “Is Grandpa going to be a ghost?” he asks. No, Tal responds. “So he won’t haunt us?” Tal patiently replies that he doesn’t think so.

As it turns out, Tal will be right on the first count and wrong on the second. MGM+’s Emperor of Ocean Park is not the sort of story in which spirits return to wreak supernatural havoc. It is, however, entirely about the ways in which Tal and his siblings are haunted by the memory of their dad, conservative judge Oliver Garland (Forest Whitaker), in ways that lend themselves to both Grishamesque thrills and Succession-lite angst. But even Whitaker’s innate gravitas can only do so much to fight gravity. Eventually, the drama sags under the weight of its messy ambition.