Rent The Kennedys (2011)

The Kennedys and their Curse - The Kennedys review by AW

Actually surprised to note this over 10 year old and 3-part series has no review as yet on here (7thJan2023) as I found it very interesting.

Yes it's a loose dramatisation of the true events, with an always interesting assumption of the real family dynamics behind the scenes.

Greg Kinnear is great as JFK with Katie Holmes a very creditable Jackie lookalike but the stand out for me was Barry Pepper, a face I didn't know, as JFK's younger brother Bobby, the Attorney General during his administration. Englishman Tom Wilkinson was strangely cast as the scheming Daddy Joseph P Kennedy, a Kingmaker figure, but he does a good job. The Kennedys were as near royalty as you can get in the U S. of A. but they had some dreadful tragedies en famille to contend with. It's hard to credit too that JFK only managed just short of 3 years in office yet is one of the best known of all Presidents, during a time of dissent and international upheaval. You see the anguish of the difficult decisions Jack had to make. Plus everyone over 60 knows exactly where they were in 1963 when Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

Found it slightly uneven and rushed in episodes 7&8 concluding the series, I thought there was a bit of deja vu in there, was sure I was seeing repeats of sections already shown previously, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.