The Kennedys (2011)

I was expecting The Kennedys miniseries to be sensationalist and over the top, in a similar vein as The Tudors with lashings of gratuitous sex/drugs/violence, especially considering the furore the series created in America where the channel who commissioned it decided not to show it, some say after being leaned on by the Kennedy clan themselves. The resultant 8-part drama turned out to be more respectful than a Tudors taste-free-fest but also came very far from that other pinnacle of US political drama, The West Wing. The writers/directors were previously involved in 24 but there was no action to be found here. 

Instead, The Kennedys presented a quick run down of the salient points in the lives of John F. (Greg Kinnear), Bobby (Barry Pepper), Jackie (Katie Holmes), Joe (Tom Wilkinson) and matriarch Rose (Diana Hardcastle). This covered JFK's elections to Congress and the White House, the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK and later Bobby, alongside aspects that the Kennedys would probably rather were cut from the drama, including Joe's dealings with Chicago mobsters, Joe's decision to have his daughter lobotomised, JFK's affairs with Marilyn Monroe (among others), and Jack and Jackie's use of drugs to get through the day. Some of these events were familiar to me, others less so. The disclaimer at the end of each episode stated that the show was based on historical fact but that some aspects (such as timings of events) were manipulated for storytelling effect, which is understandable. 

Without taking everything presented as gospel - since I'm not so gullible - I still found the drama intriguing and if anything will make me seek out more reliable factual sources to discover the truth behind The Kennedys. The cast were all good, although Kinnear and Pepper's efforts to recreate authentic accents and mumbling could be a bit repetitive. Holmes felt a little lightweight as the semi-mythical Jackie O, but she was balanced by a strong turn from ever-reliable Wilkinson as the man behind the family - though he was matched well in later episodes by Hardcastle as his vengeful wife, who dismissed his mistress as his nurse when a stroke left him wheel-chair bound. 

At times the drama was slow and felt too much like a live action text book. I liked the way that events cut-across time lines, so that during 1960 election night there were flashbacks to how Jack got into politics in the first place, following the death of Joe Jr during WW2. It felt like there was a lot packed into these 8 episodes, though I felt that it could have done with a few more in order to let the characters and the story breath before skipping on to the next Big Event. The show looked fairly cheap for a US drama, you could tell a major network wasn't behind it, as each scene took place in a cramped-feeling room. There was no sense of scope - this was provided by real-life news reel footage. Overall I'd say this was a good primer on the Kennedys, but there will be more substance and drama to be found on the family elsewhere.