2 JFK miniseries on assassination

I finished watching the 1983 miniseries today. Nowhere does it differ more from the new 2011 miniseries than in its interpretation of the assassination. What surprised me is that the new version goes out of its way to endorse the Oswald single-assassination myth. And it is a myth unless you disregard considerable medical and eye-witness evidence that shots came from two directions because the president was shot from the front as well as from the rear. Every doctor first seeing the body described frontal entrance wounds. Witnesses saw gun flashes and smoke from the grassy knoll. Yet the new miniseries spends time with Oswald, establishing a sole gunman theory, and this after a Congressional investigation decades ago presumably put the Warren Commission's error to rest. And there was no dramatic reason to do this whatever. Why? Perhaps because the author is a conservative and all the conspiracy theories blame forms of extreme right politics for the assassination. But who knows? It was unnecessary but it was done.

In the 1983 version we not only don't see Oswald, we don't even see the Book Depository. When the president is shot, he grabs the front of his throat -- the front -- and this is the only clue about the nature of the assassination. The miniseries ends when JFK dies.

I prefer the 1983 version but neither is as strong as it could be and the 2011 version has much going for it. Maybe the third try down the road will be the charm.