No words can describe the quality and importance of this masterpiece. Pacey and gripping throughout every minute of this six hour series, Captains and The Kings captures the essence of our political reality both in the past and today.
"Chew on this and get it down: The world runs on money. Call it commerce, call it government, call it the will of the people but what it really is, what we really have all over this world is Government of the Money, by the Money and for the Money."
There has never been a truer line given to any character in any drama and, at the pivotal moment when it is delivered, everything falls comprehensively into place.
The plot tells the story of Joe Armagh, a 14 year old Irish immigrant arriving in America in 1857 to find himself orphaned and responsible for the care of his two younger siblings. He finds work and connections and gradually builds up a fortune only to discover that wealth and power have both privileges and costs. He is recruited to the super rich set who are able to control politics and even world events. And he persuades them to groom his son to be a President motivated to serve them. Of course there is a heavy price to pay and the curse of a Senator driven to suicide through his dealings with Joe plays out its inevitable path.
The similarity of the plot to the fate of the Kennedy family 50 years later is neither an accident to the author nor the director. Indeed it can be argued that the whole drama is a brilliant analysis of the Kennedy assassinations of 1963 and 1968 indicating the powers that orchestrated them and the reasoning behind them.
Joe is clearly paralleled with the patriarch of the Kennedy clan. One of his sons is killed in wartime action, a daughter is mentally handicapped, another son is clever at business whilst the son chosen to be President is plainly modeled on the philandering but noble thinking JFK with a death scene that copies almost entirely the shooting of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Even the camera angle of the dying man are almost a carbon copy of the stricken Senator in a Los Angeles hotel. The curse of the Kennedy's which has seen tragedy strike at the family over four generations is mirrored on the Armagh family.
But the key element to the whole production is that the Super Elite is shown as manipulators of the US-Spanish War of 1898, the assassination of Mckinley in 1901, the Great War against Germany in 1914 and ultimately the assassination of both Kennedy brothers 50 years later. And the descendants of the group are still in power today.
"Chew on this and get it down: The world runs on money. Call it commerce, call it government, call it the will of the people but what it really is, what we really have all over this world is Government of the Money, by the Money and for the Money."
There has never been a truer line given to any character in any drama and, at the pivotal moment when it is delivered, everything falls comprehensively into place.
The plot tells the story of Joe Armagh, a 14 year old Irish immigrant arriving in America in 1857 to find himself orphaned and responsible for the care of his two younger siblings. He finds work and connections and gradually builds up a fortune only to discover that wealth and power have both privileges and costs. He is recruited to the super rich set who are able to control politics and even world events. And he persuades them to groom his son to be a President motivated to serve them. Of course there is a heavy price to pay and the curse of a Senator driven to suicide through his dealings with Joe plays out its inevitable path.
The similarity of the plot to the fate of the Kennedy family 50 years later is neither an accident to the author nor the director. Indeed it can be argued that the whole drama is a brilliant analysis of the Kennedy assassinations of 1963 and 1968 indicating the powers that orchestrated them and the reasoning behind them.
Joe is clearly paralleled with the patriarch of the Kennedy clan. One of his sons is killed in wartime action, a daughter is mentally handicapped, another son is clever at business whilst the son chosen to be President is plainly modeled on the philandering but noble thinking JFK with a death scene that copies almost entirely the shooting of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Even the camera angle of the dying man are almost a carbon copy of the stricken Senator in a Los Angeles hotel. The curse of the Kennedy's which has seen tragedy strike at the family over four generations is mirrored on the Armagh family.
But the key element to the whole production is that the Super Elite is shown as manipulators of the US-Spanish War of 1898, the assassination of Mckinley in 1901, the Great War against Germany in 1914 and ultimately the assassination of both Kennedy brothers 50 years later. And the descendants of the group are still in power today.