"The Kennedys" is an eight-part miniseries that chronicles the lives,triumphs and tragedies of the Kennedy family.The cast includes Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, Katie Holmes, and Tom Wilkinson together with Diana Hardcastle,Kristin Booth,Chris Diamantopoulos,Charlotte Sullivan and Serge Houde.This historical drama was written by Stephen Kronish and directed by Jon Cassar.The series was centered during the 1960's and how Joseph Kennedy, Sr. shaped his sons John and Robert to become two of the most influential men during the decade.The focus of personal stories was the relationship between the brothers as well as their respective relationship with their father.The political events during that decade also fell into the background such as the Cuban Missile Crisis,Bay Of Pigs and the Civil Rights Movements as well as their extramarital affairs particularly John and Marilyn Monroe as well as that of Robert and Marilyn Monroe.Added to that is also recalls the scandals that the most fabled political family that were involved in.While it was said to be an exhaustive research of the Kennedy family,the absence of many members were both controversial and intriguing.The stories of Edward,Kathleen, Eunice, and Jean were definitely missing.But nevertheless,the viewer is treated to a great stories of the members featured especially as we get to know how the role of Joseph Sr as a father of to his sons which has yet to be told in many films and TV miniseries featuring the Kennedy family.Aside from that,we are treated to a lot of strong performances from the cast especially Wilkinson and Pepper.Overall,it is an outstanding mini-series that one would surely enjoy.

I have watched this series through nearly to the end and have found it quite entertaining - especially the character of Bobby Kennedy played very well by Barry Pepper. However, I come away feeling that the show tries to 'whitewash' the rampant sexual immorality that has become synonymous with the Kennedy name and this affects things in a number of ways in this series, in some ways realistically and in others very unrealistically.Joe Kennedy, Sr. brazenly and ghoulishly commits adultery in front of his wife and has no concern for her feelings and I think the series at least somewhat realistic in the way it captures this mean-spirited oppression. However, JFK is just as sleazy as his dad, yet the series portrays him almost sympathetically. He was a HORRIBLE husband who apparently missed no opportunities to cheat on Jackie with any bimbo that came along. While a man can make mistakes, it is simply not right to portray such vile behavior in a sympathetic light. If you don't believe me, think of how a normal family would deal with this. I don't think most wives would stand by and be humiliated repeatedly by such behavior. I suppose they decided that the fame and fortune was better than fidelity.And that's where some of the show's realism comes in. I was struck by the intense weakness of character of both Rose and Jackie Kennedy. I don't know if it was intentional but Katie Holmes' portrayal of Jackie came off as a pretty simple-minded First Lady who was never willing or strong enough to elicit any promises of change from her wayward husband. He just sort of had a 'this is the way I am so you have to accept it'. It's really gross and I don't see why we have to have leaders like that.Surely a good president can be a good family man, too? All in all, it's an interesting watch but read between the lines!

This is an excellent American TV drama series, if one is satisfied with the story of Jack and Bobby Kennedy told from the personal point of view, with little of the politics, and many significant persons omitted (such as Teddy, completely). The series is dominated by the powerful presence of that egotistical monster, Joe Kennedy, the father, who is portrayed magnificently by Tom Wilkinson, in a performance worthy of an Oscar. Everybody in the series is very good except for one person: Katie Holmes was catastrophically miscast as Jackie Kennedy, and no matter how hard she tries, she is just so wrong for the part. She gets everything wrong, plays the waif, and lacks the sophistication and poise necessary. (In fact, it is difficult to think who really could have played Jackie Kennedy.) Greg Kinnear as Jack and Barry Pepper as Bobby are both absolutely brilliant, and they both look and sound like Jack and Bobby. Diana Hardcastle, as their mother Rose, is also a powerful and effective presence on screen. Kristin Booth does very well as Ethel, Bobby's wife, though whether Ethel was really like that I have no idea, not being a Kennedy expert or having met any of them. By coincidence I was in Washington (where I did not live) on the day of Jack Kennedy's funeral. My mother and I stood on the kerb of a street and Jack Kennedy's coffin went by us, covered in an American flag. A black limousine went past us, just six feet away, and inside I could clearly see Jackie and her children in mourning. It was a traumatic event for the whole country and the world. I was incredulous that several American channels refused to broadcast this series, apparently because it challenged the 'Kennedy myth', whatever that is. But really this series goes very easy on the Kennedys and portrays Jack as a hero with only minor blemishes, and Bobby as an even more heroic figure who has no blemishes at all. The only Kennedy who comes in for significant criticism is the father, Joe. The rest emerge relatively unscathed from scrutiny. If American audiences by now cannot face the fact that Jack Kennedy was a compulsive womanizer, then I do truly despair of their naiveté. A woman friend of mine told me in the 1960s that when he was a senator in the late 1950s, Jack Kennedy roared up beside her in a sports car in a Washington street and tried to pick her up as brazenly as that. Are we to suppress this kind of information about historical figures? Why? This series is certainly not historically accurate at all times. For instance, in Episode 3, Jack Kennedy twice engages Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, in conversation in the White House during the Bay of Pigs invasion. But Allen Dulles was not in Washington at the time, so that this could not have happened. Dulles made sure he was abroad when the invasion was launched, even though he was in charge of it due to it being wholly a CIA operation, for the reason that it was designed to fail. The last thing Dulles wanted was for Castro to be overthrown. After all, Castro was needed for the phoney Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year, which in turn was needed in order to ratchet up the public fear level of the Cold War and increase the spending. The Kennedy boys were highly intelligent, and when they began to figure out some of the things that were really going on, and that they were being misinformed and manipulated, by 1963 the assassination of Jack was inevitable. After all, Jack wanted to pull out of a Vietnam War, and he wanted the Federal Reserve to stop printing American currency and have it printed by the Treasury instead. You can't do that! A president who tries that won't live for many weeks, and he didn't. Presidents must never imagine that they are really in charge of anything, for if they make that mistake, they are terminated. It wasn't necessary to assassinate Nixon, because he was easier to frame and shame, and besides, he used too many expletives on his tapes. This series perpetuates the stale myth of Oswald as a lone assassin, which no one believes anymore. The series even shows him firing a cheap bolt action rifle repeatedly at Kennedy, despite the fact that it has been proved conclusively that the rifle found at the Book Depository was physically incapable of being reloaded by bolt action fast enough for the shots which killed the President. We all know there was a conspiracy and that there was more than one gunman, so why pretend otherwise in this series? Also, as far as I recall from the accounts at the time, Oswald did go down to have lunch, and did not remain on the upper floor with a sandwich as portrayed in the series. All of the political background of the Kennedy Administration is sketched so lightly you would barely know it existed, except for the racial integration issues, which are given prominence. And much is made of the fact that Kennedy appointed someone black as a White House security guard. The producers of the series are keen to show Kennedy as a friend of all African-Americans. Doubtless that was true. It is certain that some controversial scenes were cut out of the series. The actress who plays Marilyn Monroe talks in a documentary on the DVD about shooting the scenes where she sings 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President', but these scenes were not included in the series. It appears that attempts were made to soften the series in order to try to get an American broadcaster to accept it. For reasons that wholly mystify me, it still seems necessary in some circles to try to pretend that Jack Kennedy was an angel, and an ideal husband. Let's all grow up, shall we?

This miniseries was disappointing. It wasn't as good as it could have been. Firstly the good points. There are some things included that were quite fascinating to watch eg the physical ailments of JFK, the Mob connection to Joe, Dr Feelgood's giving drugs to the first couple, Joe Jr's death although they could have included Kathleen's death. The womanizing was handled quite deftly. So were the civil rights issues. There are 2 major faults. Firstly the screenplay. The jumping back and forth in time is unnecessary and breaks the momentum. Also there were long moments wasted on inconsequential dialog and boring bedroom and domestic scenes. If they wanted to show intimacy they didn't need to show such insignificant moments with such banal dialog. If they had cut these out they might have expanded the time period and characters covered. The Cuban Missile Crisis took too much time. The assassination wasn't handled that well. Focus was a bit too much on Bobby's reaction than Jackie's. The casting for some roles was pretty bad. Katie Holmes was a mistake. Although she looked a bit like Jackie from some angles did a bad job of acting as Jackie. Her voice was strange. Her twitching was distracting and her crooked mouth made her look a bit like she had a stroke. Very bad choice. Barry Pepper with his small mouth didn't look like Bobby at all why he won an award beats me. Charlotte Sullivan as Monroe was a strange choice. She is pretty but didn't look or act like MM at all. With so many actresses they could have chosen why on earth her? Greg Kinnear alone looks the person he was supposed to play - JFK but his face seemed frozen at times like he didn't want to lose that special angle. The Ethel actress didn't have her demeanor or look.