About

THE KENNEDYS tells us who they were.

THE KENNEDYS, a major new four part series, uses public events as a background to tell the intimate story of this iconic family. It is about epic achievements and private failures, about loyalty and love, resentment and betrayal, about people imbued with great gifts and burdened by great flaws, about success of Biblical proportions and tragedy worthy of the Greeks.

It is a story of family loyalty, of lives built on the deaths of siblings, and of sons bending to the will of their dominant father.

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. is determined that his son will one day become President of the United States of America. But it is his eldest son Joe Jr. that he wants to make it to the White House, second son Jack is just an afterthought.

Only after his older brother’s death during WWII is John F. Kennedy is pushed into politics by his father. Jack realises he doesn’t possess the innate political gifts of his older brother and he requires a constant infusion of drugs because of his physical ailments, which the public must never know.

There are other matters that must stay private if the Kennedys are to succeed. Jack’s wife, Jackie, worries that his infidelity will be the curse of their marriage. But when he wins the Presidency, she tells him that his questing for sexual conquest must end. “I’ve had my private humiliations,” she says, “I won’t have them in front of the American people.”

Bobby Kennedy manages Jack’s campaign, and after his brother’s victory he wants to slip back into private life. But Joe Sr. has other plans and neither of his sons can refuse their father’s wishes.

Ultimately, Joseph Sr. sees his sons reach the highest levels of power and prestige. But the cost is incalculable.

Starring Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear as JFK, Barry Pepper as Bobby Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy and BAFTA and Golden Globe Award winner Tom Wilkinson as Joseph Kennedy Sr.

Watch previews here

Click here to find out more about the assassination of JFK