Where were you when JFK was shot? It doesn’t matter; it’s likely you weren’t even born. Still, it’s a fascinating and dark chapter in modern American history, you’ll agree.
So dark and fascinating that The History Channel spared no expense in making The Kennedys – a star studded, detailed dramatisation of John F Kennedy’s presidential career, and his equally fascinating family.
You might have heard of this already; Katie ‘Mrs Cruise’ Holmes’ face makes a fantastic Jackie Kennedy, truly an inspired bit of casting. Greg Kinnear is JFK and Tom Wilkinson is Kennedy Snr – the puppet master of the Kennedy’s empire.
Yes, this is a History Channel drama with a Hollywood cast, and a Hollywood budget if reports are to be believed. The Kennedys is the most expensive bit of telly The History Channel has ever produced. It’s big.
It’s huge. One of America’s most beloved presidents in a prime-time historical drama, filled with sex, corruption and Jackie Kennedy (she’s like America’s Princess Diana), on the daddy of all factual TV channels? It’s perfect. It’s unmissable. Didn’t you hear? It’s been cancelled.
Yes, The Kennedys has been pulled by The History Channel in the States before it’s been aired, and sold to, uh, ReelzChannel. Somehow, though, The History Channel UK will be showing the four-part mini-series from April 7th.
Why it’s been yanked from the Yank’s schedules is still shrouded in the kind of blank ink that kept JFK’s murder so perversely speculatory for so long. Maybe it was a lone producer on a grassy knoll.
The Kennedys is about power, ambition, fathers and sons. Get your head round the cast doing their best party impersonations of a Kennedy and it’s a bold show with broad ambition and, some may say, controversial.
JFK is the obvious focus in The Kennedys, but recounting his life will forever be a tricky one; he’s an American martyr now so delving into his womanising or his lack of true political ambition becomes a powerful distraction from the very reason we’re watching a show about this particular US president. He was murdered. In front of everyone.
Does his death make him a better man than, say, Obama or Reagan? No. The Kennedys succeeds very well in making you understand this but, only two episodes in, and it’s a very personal story, not a political one.
It’s difficult to speculate on the facts in The Kennedys, so much of the drama is stapled together from accounts of private conversations no one heard by men who are no longer alive. Did Mama Kennedy really tell her husband’s mistress that Bobby belonged to her while the elder brothers belonged to their father? Doubt it. Seemed like exposition.
This over-humanising of JFK paints a stark contrast to the idea of the president of the most powerful country in the free world. So far, it’s impossible to imagine Kinnear’s puppy-eyed, randomly confident, apparently soul-crushed JFK leading talks on the Cuban Missile Crisis or pulling Marylyn Monroe.
The juice of the show is easily Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, played by Barry Pepper. Bringing out the conflict from the strong father-son domination, Pepper’s Bobby is a touching portrayal and all together more palatable than Kinnear’s wide-eyed wonder.
But despite being well acted, well directed and beautifully shot The Kennedys feels oddly empty; as if the drama might stop suddenly so we might review what we’ve learned. Well, so far we’ve learned JFK never said no to a girl, Jackie knew from day one about her hubby’s wandering eye and Kennedy Snr can make anyone president.
The Kennedys is neither about the JFK legend or JFK’s politics, it’s a family drama distracted by historical hindsight.
Still, the story of the Kennedy family and their political dynasty is fascinating even today and, as a drama, The Kennedys is a compelling journey through their lives.
