Be sure to tune in tonight to meet The Kennedys, the wackiest, most dysfunctional TV family around. A pill-popping, corset-wearing, election-rigging nightmare, they're a cross between the Drapers and the Gallaghers. Except they're real. If they weren't, no one would care too much about this. Even before it was made, complaints had been voiced thanks to scripts being circulated. Plenty of historians chipped in to criticise the screenplay (apparently an early draft), director Robert Greenwald (nothing to do with the production) was so moved he created the stopkennedysmears website. If this show was poisonous enough to inspire the director of the Olivia Newton-John flop Xanadu to create a website then there was clearly something deadly serious going on.
The US History Channel, which the show was first intended, publicly bailed on the project, saying it was "not a fit for the History brand" (although they didn't mean the UK branch of the brand, who are showing it tonight). From there it was led a merry dance around other channels, such as Starz, the 101 Channel and FX, all passed. This was enough for the show's executive producer Joel Surnow to start rumblings of a conspiracy at the highest level with board members with strong Kennedy ties nixing the show.
While it's tempting to believe there was such a conspiracy afoot, there's no real evidence to support it. Besides, as Kennedy-related conspiracies go, there are certainly bigger ones – this one barely registers. Seeing the finished product, it could just be a perfectly understandable reaction to a talky, soapy biopic that has a nice sideline in fairly unashamed muck-raking. Common sense could well be the real reason behind it being so unloved. Still, it was picked up by ReelzChannel which, not coincidentally, reported a near doubling of their subscriptions after they announced they had the show. They started airing it last week, putting it up against a new show about an even more scandalous, yet far less litigious, family; The Borgias. Tonight we can decide for ourselves if this fuss is warranted.
The Kennedys has a pretty good cast for TV; Greg Kinnear, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper and Katie Holmes, all of whom have had major roles in movies (although one of those movies was Battlefield Earth). There's always great camp value in watching well-known actors play well-known people and in this area The Kennedys does not disappoint as the cast wrestle with the Boston/New England accent like a convention of "Diamond" Joe Quimby impersonators. Whatever cash they could raise for the project seems to have gone on the four leads; lower down the credits the parts suffer, there's a particularly poor Frank Sinatra on offer here.
Also, possibly due to budget constraints, there's not much scope to proceedings. It's almost entirely confined to closeups of actors indoors, there's no spectacle here, not that the story really demands it, but it's very claustrophobic. The dialogue too isn't great, far too much "I am the president and you, Bobby, are not only my brother but the attorney general so you must speak to J Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI" sort of thing. For long stretches characters talk in pure exposition, it's like they got the actors together to talk about the Kennedys rather than actually play them. There are also moments of ridiculous high drama, such as when a Kennedy (won't say which one, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised though) rips a crucifix from the wall to show his/her hatred of religion, it's like something from a horror movie. Not a good one, either.
There's probably no Kennedy family machinations behind the mild furore this show whipped up, no industrial/military complex keeping it from viewers, no grassy knoll or book depository where channel executives gather to take aim. Cold feet seems to be the problem, not wanting to upset the many JFK fans, the family were for the longest time the US equivalent of royalty. This storm in a teacup is unlikely to have far reaching effects for those behind it. I can't see Tom Wilkinson getting (unofficially) blacklisted and Katie Holmes, showbiz royalty across the pond, will not find this show to be a hindrance to her career, whatever that career may be exactly.
The Kennedys reminded me most of Oliver Stone's movie about The Doors – it too paints in the broadest strokes and almost does itself an injury trying to cram in every dubious "fact" and rumour about the subject. Over here we've had relatives of recent BBC biopics registering complaints about how their more famous kin were treated. Several of these shows are unlikely to be re-broadcast (The Curse of Steptoe even had its DVD withdrawn). Will The Kennedys suffer the same fate? Or will the fuss evaporate when people finally see the show? It's unlikely to change anyone's mind about the Kennedys or politics but it might just make you a little more careful about what shows you watch when you see the fairly dull show that caused all this supposed fuss.