The Kennedys

If you can accept you're watching the Kennedy saga through the prism of the "Fringe" universe, what you will find is an absorbing, addictive drama, with some authentic performances.

Watch The Kennedys--if you haven't already had enough--and you'll instead see a compelling, well-told tale of a political dynasty with beauty marks, warts, doubts and the embedded determination to plow full steam ahead.

The sheer power of these stories carries The Kennedys even during the occasional stumbles that result from trying to pack 40 years of history into five and a half hours of programming.

It's not likely the audience for The Kennedys will be spending much time pondering what it was about this potent, lavishly produced eight-hour miniseries airing on ReelzChannel beginning Sunday night that caused former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen, self-described political activists like the filmmaker Robert Greenwald, and concerned others to go to so much trouble to get the project quashed.

The Kennedys has the look and feel of a 1980s miniseries, and it's not trying to be anything more exalted. Unlike "The Borgias" and "Camelot," its reach does not exceed its grasp.

Definitive history The Kennedys is not. But most of the flaws explored here mostly make the characters seem human. The series credits wins as well as losses and sends most of its characters home on a positive note.

The Kennedys is eight hours long, trying to strike an uncomfortable balance between high-minded and trashy. It does not succeed.

Owing more to its overambitious breadth of material than any overt political agenda, The Kennedys necessarily compresses, stretches, distorts and otherwise crams itself into a soap opera that is occasionally elegant and even moving near the end.

The Kennedys has nothing much new to tell, and tells it over and over again.

In attempting to be both sprawling and intimate, The Kennedys winds up in a narrative no-man's land.

It's well made and also at times unnecessarily cheesy.

I can see why multiple networks passed on The Kennedys: not just because it's a political hot potato, but because it's a cobbled-together, mean-spirited piece of work that can't help alienating viewers, whether you venerate the Kennedys or dislike them.

With material this thin, the actors can only do a competent job of mimicry. Mimicry is about all you'll get.

Except for Tom Wilkinson, who's extraordinary as Joe, most of the actors, especially poor Katie Holmes, even if she at least looks like Jackie Kennedy, seem like furniture, too.

Instead, The Kennedys is blandly admiring when paying due respect, mildly cheesy when hauling out the trash, and understaged at every turn, the better for viewers to project their own fantasies onto it.

It's ploddingly earnest when it isn't crudely scurrilous....There is some fine acting.

Ultimately, though, The Kennedys is a high-speed chase through 30 turbulent years, punctuated by impersonations, some better than others.

We come away with a new understanding of the extent of the Kennedys' dysfunction but without a sense of what made them special or of how they harnessed their talents. But what you see in Wilkinson's eyes--they're black holes, devouring everyone in sight--almost makes up for what's missing from the writing.

The hot-potato miniseries dares to be unflattering. [11 Apr 2011, p.45]

The Kennedys is also--in case anyone cares--pretty bad TV: melodramatic, rote and grim.

There's nothing dishy, or infuriating, or entertaining about the miniseries. It's enervating and unnecessary.

All told, the whole thing plays like a bad telenovela filtered through a "History for Dummies" text.