Netflix announces new Kennedy family series

LOS ANGELES

One of America’s most famous families is getting the Netflix treatment. A new drama series titled “Kennedy,” based on historian Fredrik Logevall’s book “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956,” is on the way, the streaming platform announced on Oct. 20.

The series will star Michael Fassbender as family patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. and will “explore the triumphs and tragedies of the Kennedy family,” according to Netflix.

Those triumphs and tragedies have long defined the Kennedys, the political dynasty that produced the 35th U.S. president as well as a New York senator and presidential hopeful — both assassinated. The notion of a “Kennedy curse” only deepened after John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash alongside his wife and sister-in-law in 1999.

The show will begin decades before John F. Kennedy entered the White House, with the first season set in the 1930s and following “the improbable ascent of Joe and Rose Kennedy and their nine children, including rebellious second son Jack, who struggles to escape the shadow of his golden boy older brother.”

The eight-episode series, not to be confused with the upcoming Ryan Murphy–produced “American Love Story” focusing on JFK Jr., does not yet have a release date.