Television series

The Kennedys

Name: The Kennedys
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2011
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Barry Pepper, Tom Wilkinson

Drama

A dramatized look at the Kennedys' public and private lives across their most consequential decade. Greg Kinnear anchors this eight-hour miniseries through JFK's presidency—the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights upheaval—while the show digs into family tensions, affairs, and the weight of political dynasty. It's handsomely made, briskly paced, and aims for both historical scope and intimate domestic portrait.

TVMaze rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy sprawling family soap-opera history, where backroom deals and bedroom gossip sit side by side and the famous faces come off a little more human than the textbooks allow.

Skip it if you want the Kennedy era treated with reverence or fine-grained political detail; this is brisk, glossy and more interested in family melodrama than in how the crises were handled.

What it asks of you: Eight hour-long episodes that move quickly and keep a lot of characters in play, so you need to track siblings, advisers and affairs without much breathing room.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Crown2016

Another prestige miniseries about a famous political family navigating public duty and private heartbreak. Claire Foy's Elizabeth is as compelling as Kinnear's Kennedy, and the production design is immaculate. If you loved the Kennedy family saga, this offers the same blend of grandeur and dysfunction.

But It's British, spans decades, and moves more slowly than The Kennedys. The early seasons focus more on Elizabeth's marriage than on political crisis, which some find less immediately gripping.

Thirteen Days2000

A taut thriller about the Cuban Missile Crisis that puts you inside the war room during thirteen days of existential tension. Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, and Steven Culp are excellent, and the film captures the terrifying calculus of nuclear brinkmanship with real urgency and intelligence.

But It's a narrow focus on one crisis rather than a full biographical sweep. Some find the Costner subplot a distraction from the historical machinery at the center.

Jackie2016

Natalie Portman's precise, haunted performance as Jackie Kennedy in the days after Dallas is extraordinary. It's less about JFK than about what his death did to her, and it's visually stunning—a film that moves like a shattered memory, in fragments and spirals.

But The accent is polarizing. More importantly, it's a meditation on grief and trauma, not a conventional biopic. If you want action or plot momentum, you'll find neither.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Kennedys

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Right Stuff1983

Both explore American power and dynasty through the lens of the early 1960s. Both are fascinated by charismatic men shaped by competition and fate. The Kennedys sent Shepard and Glenn to space; The Right Stuff shows what that bet cost the men who flew.

Philip Kaufman's epic about the Mercury Seven astronauts captures the same golden-age American mythology the Kennedys embodied, but from an entirely different angle—test pilots chasing glory in the cockpit instead of the Oval Office. The ambition, the competitiveness, the private cost of public achievement: it's all here. Gorgeously shot, impeccably acted, and it makes you feel what the early 1960s believed about itself.

But It's nearly four hours long and moves at its own pace. Some will find the aviation sequences slow or technical. It's also a different kind of drama—more mythic, less intimate, less about scandal.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All2015

A four-hour documentary that opens up Sinatra's connections to the Kennedys, his mob ties, and his role in the political machinery of the mid-century. It's detailed, authoritative, and genuinely revelatory about the world the Kennedys inhabited.

But It's a documentary, not drama—no acted scenes, no romantic tension. Sinatra is the subject, not the Kennedys, so you're seeing them from the periphery.

Frost/Nixon2008

An edge-of-your-seat duel between David Frost and Richard Nixon over live television. Frank Langella's Nixon is mesmerizing—the political exhaustion, the paranoia, the self-awareness beneath the bluster. It's about power, history, and how men justify themselves.

But Nixon, not Kennedy. The film moves like a stage play, which is exactly what it was adapted from—talk-heavy and claustrophobic rather than sweeping.

Chappaquiddick2018

A quietly devastating portrait of Ted Kennedy after the car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne. Jason Clarke is superb; the film is less interested in scandal than in how power and shame corrupt a man's judgment in real time. It's a Kennedy study from a completely different angle.

But It's about one night and its aftermath, not a presidency. And it's bleak in a way that offers no redemption—not everyone wants that from a Kennedy film.

Succession2018

Both are about dynasty—what it does to people, how siblings compete for a crown, how public success and private fracture run parallel. Succession asks what happens to power when the patriarch dies; The Kennedys lives in that shadow.

A modern tragicomedy about a powerful family tearing itself apart over an empire. Though it's about a media mogul and his children, not the Kennedys, it captures the same machinery: how wealth and power breed entitlement, how siblings become rivals, how public image masks private dysfunction. Jesse Armstrong's writing is surgical and funny and cruel in ways The Kennedys cannot be.

But It's contemporary and fictional, not historical. The register is cynical and satirical where The Kennedys is earnest. And it's much darker about family—there's almost no love here, which some find exhaust.

A Prophet2009

Both examine how a young man with charisma and intelligence navigates and manipulates power structures. Both are interested in what separates survival from domination, and what that costs the person who succeeds.

A French prison drama that feels like it has nothing to do with the Kennedys until you realize it's about the same thing: how a young man with ambition, intelligence, and a gift for reading power learns to survive and dominate in a closed system. Tahar Rahim's Malik rises from nothing using charm and ruthlessness. It's tense, intelligent, and morally unsettling in a way prestige dramas rarely are.

But It's set in a prison, in French, and its philosophy is entirely amoral. If you wanted the Kennedys to teach you about American idealism, this film will make you very uncomfortable. It's also slow and observational rather than plot-driven.