Like Once Upon a Time, which challenges previous accounts that painted Bessette Kennedy as a “bitchy” degenerate, JFK Jr. & Carolyn Bessette is a revisionist project that makes Carolyn its protagonist. The casting was crucial here, and Love Story really got it right with Sarah Pidgeon. A Tony-nominated Broadway alum who came into the series with a few TV (Tiny Beautiful Things, The Wilds) and film (The Friend, I Know What You Did Last Summer) credits, she will still look like a fresh face to most viewers, as Bessette did to the world when her relationship with Kennedy went public. Pidgeon’s performance is brilliant. Far from the tabloid caricature, her Carolyn is a model of intelligence, poise, ambition, and control—a no-nonsense career woman who seems, at once, to be genuinely reticent to step into the Kennedy spotlight and playing hard to get in a savvy romantic long game that recalls the hit mid-’90s dating manual for women, The Rules. We get to know and like the character not in spite of her complexity, but because of it.