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Beginning in the middle of John F. Kennedy's term as president, this PBS documentary presents the saga of the Kennedy family through the tragedies and lost potential of the 1960s and 1970s. Relying on interviews with Kennedy experts, including author Doris Kearns Goodwin, journalist and former Kennedy press secretary Pierre Salinger, historians and former Kennedy advisers Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, and other family friends and confidantes, as well as copious archival footage from television news organizations, this documentary presents an intelligent and balanced look at Kennedy's performance in office, his rumored personal flaws, and his legacy. With President Kennedy's death, the political force in the family became his brother Robert, who would himself be cut down by an assassin as a senator running for president in 1968. The story winds down with the youngest Kennedy brother, Ted, becoming a powerful senator, but ultimately failing in his own attempt to run for the nation's highest office. The Kennedy family has always fascinated America, and this documentary does a fine job of going beyond the superficial glamour to examine the real workings of the family in politics, the sources of their motivation, and the way the family acted as a cohesive political unit.
--Robert J. McNamara
