Watching the East Village in 'Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette'

The East Village has a supporting role in the new FX/Hulu series "Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette," which debuted on Thursday. 

The nine-part series from executive producer Ryan Murphy follows the couple from their early-1990s courtship to their deaths in 1999.

As scenes were filmed in the East Village, we watched the first episode, in which the two are shown on a date at Panna II, the longtime Indian restaurant at 93 First Ave. at Sixth Street. 

The scene was actually filmed inside the familiar glow of the dining room. (Panna II, meanwhile, continues its real-life run as one of the surviving restaurants at the address once shared with Royal Bangladesh and Milon.)

Whether that dinner actually happened there is unclear. Biographers place their first meeting in 1992 at Calvin Klein, where Bessette worked, and their early outings elsewhere before officially dating in 1994. An AI search tells us, "The scene of them dining at the string-light-adorned Indian restaurant Panna II is a depicted, and likely dramatized, moment." (And they were known to eat at more stylish places.)

There are a few other creative liberties around here (though Panna II has long been part of the city's restaurant lore). Also in the first episode, 48 Stuyvesant St., the photogenic seven-story building at 10th Street, stands in for Bessette's actual East Village apartment building around the corner on Second Avenue. (She started living in the EV in 1989.) 

We'll see more of the neighborhood in upcoming episodes. 

Readers may recall the production filming around the East Village last summer (here, here and here), spotting cast members Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon as Kennedy and Bessette. (Pics below in Tompkins Square Park by Stacie Joy.)

The project has drawn criticism from within the Kennedy family. John Kennedy Jr.'s nephew, Jack Schlossberg, said last year that the series profits off his family "in a grotesque way." 

Early reviews have been solid — the series currently holds an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Our viewing experience involved saying "this is really awful" to no one in particular roughly every three minutes through Episode 1.

And yes, we'll watch the next eight episodes. Guilty pleasure rules apply.