

'The Kennedys' poignant and provocative TV

The miniseries Team Kennedy didn't want you to see is well worth the effort to find the obscure Reelz Channel.

"The Kennedys" is as poignant as it is provocative and as faithful to history as can be expected from a docudrama. Conversations and incidents necessarily have been invented but this is par for this course. The same thing occurred in dozens of other Kennedy films and miniseries without them being treated like pariahs. No outrageously improbable words are put into anyone's mouth.

The well paced eight-hour production, which covers the 1930s through the death of Bobby Kennedy in 1968, is thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end. However, it does require forgiving the fact that with the exception of Katie Holmes as Jackie, the lead actors don't resemble the historical icons they are playing. This might not be the liability it would have been a generation ago. The children of Baby Boomers are not as familiar with the faces, voices and quirks of John and Bobby as their parents are. It is 48 years since JFK was assassinated and a couple of decades since it seemed there was a Kennedy project on TV every month.

In no way is the miniseries that was commissioned, then shunned, by the History Channel a cheap shot at America's royal family, as Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver and Kennedy acolytes alleged, in some cases before the script was done. To the contrary, the depiction of everyone but patriarch Joe Kennedy is, on balance, kind and sympathetic. The epitome of this is a scene at the end of the episode in which JFK grapples with the Cuban missile crisis, which put the world on the cusp of nuclear annihilation. Asked by little Caroline about her father, Jackie tells her daughter, "Your father just saved the world."

JFK's philandering is a thread weaved through the narrative but breaks no new ground. Moreover, it is mostly implied and never gratuitously exploited.

Joe Kennedy Sr. is shown indoctrinating his sons with his personal credo: "Wives don't expect fidelity but they don't want infidelity thrown in their faces." Unfortunately, Joe Sr. and John adhered more scrupulously to only the first half of the theory.

JFK's barely concealed adultery, including trysts with Marilyn Monroe, is seen almost causing Jackie to divorce him. It is strongly suggested that John breaking it off with Monroe was the catalyst for her suicide.

On the other hand, Bobby, who also was widely believed to have strayed with the sex symbol actress, is seen as unfailingly faithful to his spouse Ethel, despite at least one almost comically aggressive attempt by Monroe to get him into her bedroom.

Beyond this personal weakness, JFK is portrayed as a politician who loved his country and its people. Every crucial decision, from confronting the Cuban missile crisis to the building of the Berlin Wall, is colored by his concern over potential loss of American lives. He is shown to be the first president to insist, against resistance, that there be a black man in his Secret Service detail, and he is forceful and unwavering in not allowing the governor of Mississippi to thwart the integration of the state university.

Joe Kennedy, however, is depicted as an irredeemible scoundrel, a shameless adulterer and probably a racist, who bought the White House for his son and unilaterally ordered a lobotomy on his mentally challenged daughter Rosemary. Joe is shown envisioning himself as president until his championing of appeasement toward Hitler as ambassador to Great Britain is embarrassingly discredited. He regroups with a strategy to put his charismatic oldest son Joe Jr. in the White House. When Joe Jr. is killed during World War II, a reluctant JFK inherits the patriarchal obligation to seek the nation's highest office.

Tom Wilkinson takes this vile character and walks away with the miniseries in a performance that screams Emmy. There is not a moment when Wilkinson is on screen that he isn't the dominant figure. The potency of his performance is such that even in the latter episodes, after Joe is felled by a debilitating stroke, he remains a commanding presence.

Greg Kinnear is as good as he has ever been as JFK, although he is overshadowed by Barry Pepper's sensitive portrayal as Bobby.

Katie Holmes marvelously captures the breathless snootiness of Jackie while managing to keep the elegant first lady a likable figure.

It is a disgrace that "The Kennedys" has been shunned by History and a succession of other cable channels. Fortunately, the viewing public has not been denied a rewarding entertainment experience.

Tom Jicha can be reached at


Program: "The Kennedys"

Airs: 8 p.m. Sunday, Tuesday-Friday April 10 on Reelz

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