The story of the Kennedy family has been likened to Greek Tragedy and so it was inevitable I suppose that a major TV network would attempt to tell the intertwining stories, although there's more than enough documentary footage available I would imagine for the serious scholar to take in.
This 8 part dramatisation therefore leans too close to soap opera for my taste with its manipulation of events, the most glaring example being the miraculous coincidence of JFK's slaying occurring at the exact moment his stroke-victim Svengali-type father gets up out of his wheelchair for the first time since his affliction. There also appears to be no such thing as a dramatic pause as every big moment is immediately filled with heavy-handed background music, unnecessarily sud-sing things up. Then there was the disjointed time-line employed, with the story going back and forward in time when surely the incidents depicted are so well known as to demand a linear structure. Finally, while I'm on the stump, I can only presume there were legal clearance reasons as to why significant figures like Frank Sinatra, Martin Luther King and especially Teddy Kennedy are conspicuous by their absences.
On the plus side, there are some good acting performances and once one forgives the actors playing such famous people not looking more like their prototypes, they at least master the distinctive Kennedy accents. Greg Kinnear perhaps wants a few inches in height but otherwise plays JFK well, right down to bearing his concealed-from-the-public back trouble, Tom Wilkinson is very good as the controlling despot Joseph Sr while best of all is Barry Pepper as the family lightning-rod Bobby. In the main female role Katie Holmes is perhaps too simpering as Jackie Kennedy but again Diana Hardcastle and Kristin Booth are very good as matriarch Rose and Bobby's wife Ethel respectively.The dialogue is well-written if stagy at times and the depiction of time and place accurately rendered.
The twin tragic endings of the two brothers are if anything understated, which was probably the best way to go, but other major incidents are treated with cinematic melodrama which didn't serve the story well in my opinion.
While it was a watchable mini-series, I feel it could have been improved if it hadn't had the whiff of "Dallas" about this tragic family dynasty, in more ways than one, sad to say.
This 8 part dramatisation therefore leans too close to soap opera for my taste with its manipulation of events, the most glaring example being the miraculous coincidence of JFK's slaying occurring at the exact moment his stroke-victim Svengali-type father gets up out of his wheelchair for the first time since his affliction. There also appears to be no such thing as a dramatic pause as every big moment is immediately filled with heavy-handed background music, unnecessarily sud-sing things up. Then there was the disjointed time-line employed, with the story going back and forward in time when surely the incidents depicted are so well known as to demand a linear structure. Finally, while I'm on the stump, I can only presume there were legal clearance reasons as to why significant figures like Frank Sinatra, Martin Luther King and especially Teddy Kennedy are conspicuous by their absences.
On the plus side, there are some good acting performances and once one forgives the actors playing such famous people not looking more like their prototypes, they at least master the distinctive Kennedy accents. Greg Kinnear perhaps wants a few inches in height but otherwise plays JFK well, right down to bearing his concealed-from-the-public back trouble, Tom Wilkinson is very good as the controlling despot Joseph Sr while best of all is Barry Pepper as the family lightning-rod Bobby. In the main female role Katie Holmes is perhaps too simpering as Jackie Kennedy but again Diana Hardcastle and Kristin Booth are very good as matriarch Rose and Bobby's wife Ethel respectively.The dialogue is well-written if stagy at times and the depiction of time and place accurately rendered.
The twin tragic endings of the two brothers are if anything understated, which was probably the best way to go, but other major incidents are treated with cinematic melodrama which didn't serve the story well in my opinion.
While it was a watchable mini-series, I feel it could have been improved if it hadn't had the whiff of "Dallas" about this tragic family dynasty, in more ways than one, sad to say.