Television
US politics’ most tragic family also prove themselves to be the most telegenic.
The fascination with America’s royal family continues in The Kennedys: After Camelot (Prime, Thursday, 8.30pm), a miniseries that spans the decades from one tragedy to another.
The series begins where the 2011 miniseries, The Kennedys, left off: with the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Once again, the lives of the most tragic family in politics are thrown into chaos, and Jackie – portrayed for the second time by Katie Holmes – starts looking at an exit strategy.
Enter Aristotle Onassis (a transformed Alexander Siddig), the Greek shipping magnate, who urges her to “marry me on my island”. It was something of a scandal. Onassis was divorced and there was talk that Jackie might be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church.
The other focus of the four-part miniseries is Ted Kennedy, played here by Friends star Matthew Perry. After the assassination of both of his brothers, he is faced with taking up the Kennedy legacy, and is promised the Democratic nomination by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. “It’s what Kennedys do,” he is told.
Ted is keen, but the fearsome family matriarch, Rose (Diana Hardcastle), puts the kibosh on the idea. Just as well, because there is another scandal about to land, now known as the Chappaquiddick incident, in which Ted left the scene of a car crash that led to the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Both Holmes and Perry told the Hollywood Reporter they relished the chance to show the longer time frame of the two figures. “I took this job because it scared me,” said Perry. “There was a lot of emotion and tragedy to be played.”
Holmes, who directed one of the episodes, said Jackie was a different character in the post-Camelot era. “She was more of an innocent in the last series.
She really becomes a strong woman in this one.”
The series is based on the book by J Randy Taraborrelli, which is a forensic look at the family after 1968, based on his interviews and 40 years of correspondence between Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson.
Director Jon Cassar says he wanted to tell that human story. “Even though they’re the first family, they’re a normal family, amazingly enough. They have the same problems everyone else has, just in the limelight.”
Perhaps the so-called Kennedy curse is behind them. The last family calamity, the death of John F Kennedy Jr, which bookends the miniseries, was in 1999.