(Two stars)
Slender, blonde, beautiful, photogenic and a fashion icon, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was the closest America ever got to their own Princess Diana.
As for the Kennedys, the family she married into, they were US royalty. All things considered, perhaps it’s not surprising that the love story of Bessette and John F Kennedy Jr should get its very own cringingly awful, made-for-TV ‘royal romance’ treatment.
The tragically brief relationship between the Calvin Klein fashionista and the smouldering son of the late president and Jackie Onassis Kennedy, may be lesser known to us Brits, but anyone hoping to glean a better picture of the glamorous couple probably shouldn’t use this nine-part series as their blueprint.
The first three episodes dropped in the early hours of yesterday morning [FRIDAY], opening with the day in July 1999 Bessette and Kennedy were killed as he piloted a light aircraft that ditched into the sea on its way from New York to Martha’s Vineyard.
The action then flashes back seven years to before they met, taking us inside Carolyn’s life as a single girl about town living in New York and working for fashion label Calvin Klein.
Played by Sarah Pidgeon, Bessette is painted as a feisty, ambitious ice maiden. When a friend is being too keen in pursuing a boyfriend, she advises her: ‘Exploit his insecurities until you’re bored of him or he’s too old to leave you.’
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was the closest America ever got to their own Princess Diana (Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Paul Kelly as John F. Kennedy Jr.)
All things considered, perhaps it’s not surprising that the love story should get its very own cringingly awful, made-for-TV ‘royal romance’ treatment (Bessette and Kennedy in 1999)
She chain smokes, beds underwear models, back chats her boss and gate-crashes parties.
Meanwhile John is an all-American, baseball-capped jock, who bares his hairy chest in seemingly every other scene. Played by newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly, Kennedy Jr is a lost soul, flailing in his love life and failing in his academic one. ‘The Hunk Flunks,’ scream the headlines as he screws up his bar exams for the second time.
We see Bessette and Kennedy meeting or the first time at a fundraiser for the Amazon Rainforest (very 1990s). They’re introduced by Calvin Klein, and Kennedy Jr – who like his dad has a thing for pretty blondes – is instantly smitten, gazing at her with puppy dog eyes.
But what’s this? Carolyn refuses to give her number to America’s most eligible bachelor, saying ‘you know where I work, try reception’. It’s just one of the many lines of totally unrealistic and clunky dialogue you can expect to hear.
When a date at an Indian restaurant inevitably follows, the smoothie informs her ‘I’m sweating and it’s not because of the food.’
There’s just one thing standing in the way of a blossoming romance – actress Daryl Hannah (played by Dree Hemingway), Kennedy’s on/off girlfriend.
Of all the character hatchet jobs, it’s Hannah that comes off the worst. She’s painted as a bimbo, cling-on girlfriend, who keeps showing up uninvited to sink her claws into the man who won’t propose (although she buys a wedding dress, just in case he does).
In episode two, Kennedy is furious when he returns home to his achingly cool Tribecca bachelor pad to find Hannah throwing a party and performing headstands in front of her drugged-up friends.
Played by Sarah Pidgeon (L) Bessette (R, in 1995) is painted as a feisty, ambitious ice maiden. When a friend is being too keen in pursuing a boyfriend
John is an all-American, baseball-capped jock, Played by newcomer Paul Anthony Kelly (L, JFK Jr pictured right in 1995)
The role of his formidable mother is taken by Naomi Watts (L, Jackie pictured right in 1989)
‘No one is going to love you like I love you,’ she pleads. ‘The universe is making space for us.’
The biggest problem Hannah has isn’t that Kennedy won’t commit it’s that his mother hates her, believing her not good enough for her ‘John-John’.
The role of his formidable mother is taken by Naomi Watts who tackles the part as by playing Natalie Portman, playing Jackie in the 2016 film Jackie.
Frail with cancer, we see her in the last months of her life where she desperately tries to steer her only son towards choosing the right girl.
‘We grew up in people’s living rooms, but the public is always holding a flower in one hand and a stone in the other. Don’t forget that,’ she warns him.
The show, in all its glossy ghastliness, has been produced by Ryan Murphy, dubbed ‘the most powerful man in television,’ following his hits like Nip/Tuck, Glee and American Horror Story.
Lately he seems to have sacrificed artistic credibility at the altar of low-rent, tawdry popularity. All’s Fair, a legal drama with Kim Kardashian, was described ‘as the worst show ever made’ while Beauty, his most recent show for Disney +, is about supermodels whose bodies explode after contracting STIs.
The show, in all its glossy ghastliness, has been produced by Ryan Murphy, dubbed ‘the most powerful man in television,’ following his hits like Nip/Tuck, Glee and American Horror Story.
John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife Carolyn pictured 1997
This series will do staggeringly well. It looks sleek and expensive, famous names are constantly dropped and the actors do their best with the material they’re given.
Episode three finishes with John, grief-stricken at the death of his mother. To escape Darryl Hannah (the minx turned up uninvited to the wake) he cycles through a downpour, arriving at Carolyn’s apartment with his sodden shirt clinging to his pecs and biceps as they melt into one another’s arms.
He doesn’t utter the words ‘is it raining? I hadn’t noticed,’ but it really wouldn’t have been a surprise if he had.
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