‘Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’ review: A romance and horror story, all in one

When Ryan Murphy gets his hands on a landmark event in American history, you can never be quite sure how it will translate to TV. Will it be a canny re-examination of how the moment shaped American culture, in the vein of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story? Or will it follow the more exploitative path of Netflix’s Monster anthology? 

That’s the question facing Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, the beginning of a new anthology series created by Connor Hines and executive produced by Murphy. Over the course of nine episodes (eight of which were given to critics for review), Love Story offers viewers an intimate look at the rise of one of the most iconic ’90s It Couples, as well as the extensive media pressure they faced. The show crafts a fittingly whirlwind romance, but the latter element hangs over said romance at all times. Because of this, the real fascination of Love Story becomes watching how the series avoids — and sometimes falls right into — the very pitfalls of obsessive media coverage it’s trying to critique.

Love Story dramatizes the relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.

From its opening moments, Love Story had me worried that it would veer into the callous depictions of tragic past events that often plague Murphy productions.

The series begins on July 16, 1999, as John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly), his wife Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon), and her sister Lauren Bessette (Sydney Lemmon) prepare to take off in the plane flight that will eventually take their lives. Thankfully, the show cuts away before dramatizing the actual crash, but the hint of tragedy (and concerns over how Love Story might eventually handle it) do persist as the show continues.

From here, Love Story flashes back to John and Carolyn’s lives before they met. He’s the presumed next in line to continue the Kennedys’ political dynasty, not to mention America’s most sought-after bachelor. She’s the ultra-confident, self-assured Calvin Klein publicist who doesn’t immediately fall at his feet.

While it takes a while for the pair to begin dating in earnest, their chemistry is palpable from the start. Newcomer Kelly brings a nervy charm to John’s early flirtations with Carolyn, rarely slipping into Kennedy caricature. (Naomi Watts’ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis voice fits that criteria far more.) Pidgeon anchors the relationship in a pragmatic cool, although at a certain point her constantly deployed hair tousles and lip bites read less as natural mannerisms and more as an actor’s heightened performance of a cool girl archetype.

Where Pidgeon really shines is the show’s latter half, when John and Carolyn may be committed to one another, but the press is committed to hounding them. Here, Pidgeon turns every moment Carolyn spends in public into a kind of social calculus. You can see her working out just how much her presence is impacting those around her, and almost always making the heartbreaking call that she’s too much of a burden.

Love Story critiques the media frenzy around JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette — but isn’t it part of it?

Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly in “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.”
Credit: Kurt Iswarienko / FX

Carolyn’s struggles with the press drive much of Love Story, and the result is undeniably compelling. The series may as well be called American Horror Story at parts thanks to the way it turns the paparazzi into a zombie-like horde. Once friendly enough to trade jokes with John (or even jump into a football game with him and his friends), they become vicious when Carolyn is in the mix. They swarm over the Kennedys’ car and camp outside their building, even going as far as to try to buzz into their loft. In one scene, the buzzer rings out like a jump scare. In others, the creeping flash of camera bulbs serve a similar purpose.

But as much as Love Story highlights the strain all this press attention put on Carolyn, it still occupies a similar space to that same media circus, just 30 years later.

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After all, the paparazzi were trying to expose some inner workings of Carolyn and John’s relationship to the public, to offer up their marriage as entertainment to the masses. Is that not Love Story‘s goal too? Even though the show emphasizes it’s a fictionalized account of history, it still painstakingly recreates several public moments from its subjects’ lives, including a 1996 fight that was caught on camera. At times, it also uses footage of the actual Kennedy family, blurring the line between fiction and reality.

Given how today’s media landscape works, it won’t be long before viewers are searching up the specifics of these moments, leading them down a rabbit hole of articles and TikToks dissecting the minutiae of the show’s historical accuracy. It’s the media frenzy of the ’90s, resurrected in a new form. (The Kennedy family was not consulted about the series.)

To its credit, Love Story approaches its leads with far more empathy than the paparazzi. The show rejects salaciousness in favor of glossy romance, while also focusing on Carolyn’s struggles to define herself beyond her husband and on John’s efforts to define himself beyond his father. These choices help make for a better, more well-rounded portrait of the couple, but crucially, they also allow Love Story to avoid becoming a downright villain in its own story.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette premieres Feb. 12 at 9 p.m. ET on FX and Hulu.