If you’re in Canada, The Kennedys will air on Sunday on History Television. Click here for programming information. In the US, you got a head start this past weekend on Reelz. And the debut episode drew a record-breaking audience for the network. 

How is it? 

I’ve watched the first two… 

And it’s amazing. In the most melodramatic, overacted, delicious soap opera kind of way. The costumes are gorgeous. And not just for Jacqueline. For Mother Kennedy, for Ethel, for Marilyn, for all of them. I am also obsessed with Barry Pepper’s hair. He plays RFK. And that overbite they give him…it’s actually kind of hot. 

Pepper’s accent, of all of them, is by far the best. Katie Holmes’s without question is the absolute worst. I have no idea what she’s doing. Half the time, in her scenes with Greg Kinnear, I wonder if he’s wondering if she’s even there. Vacant is a good word for it. Except, curiously, when she smokes. When she smokes it’s incredibly authentic. Because of course she used to smoke, right up to the month before she met Tom actually, and then it was swiftly removed, along with most of her personality. 

There’s a scene in which Katie’s Jackie has a confrontation with her mother who tells her Jack will never truly be hers… and she tries to summon the outrage, the indignation, and, well, I had to watch it several times, it gave me a lot of pleasure. It was like she couldn’t find her sunglasses. I promise you will love it. You will also love the interview she gives on election day when Jack is about to become president. It’s like her real life interviews when all she can say is amazing and wonderful and love over and over and over again. I can’t get enough of it.

And then there’s Tom Wilkinson. It’s impressive what a great actor can do with mediocre material. He manages to be maddeningly manipulative and caring and complicated and duplicitous and authentic and caricature-ish too, all at once. 

Here’s Katie leaving a meeting yesterday in Studio City. Before that though she was at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, getting updated or audited or cleansed or whatever it is that they call it. I wonder what there’s left to take away though. Seems like there might not be a whole lot left. 


Photos from Bauergriffinonline.com