American Dreams is a show on NBC that ran for three seasons from 2002 to 2005. The show is primarily about the Pryor family who live in Philadelphia in the early 1960’s, more often that not the Pryors daughter, Meg (Brittany Snow) would be central.

Although the Pryor family are fictional, the show has real life events that affect the characters as though they lived through them. The assassination of Kennedy for example is depicted.

The Pryor family are the owners of a TV and Radio store, well, John Pryor (Tom Verica) is at least. His wife, Helen (Gail O’Grady) is a homemaker. As well as Meg, John and Helen have three other children, John (Will Estes) is the eldest, Patty (Sarah Ramos) is younger than Meg and then finally Will (Ethan Dampf) the youngest.

The show itself celebrates American Music, and many classic songs from the time would feature via the inclusion of American Bandstand into the show’s plot. Famous artists from the time would perform on the show and would often be portrayed by famous musicians of the nowadays. Today’s Musicians would also frequently take other roles on the show, Art Garfunkel would appear as the Record Store owner for example. There are too many to list here but a full list can be found on the Wikipedia page for the show.

Virginia Madsen would only appear in the first Season, she played the character of Rebecca Sandstrom, Helen’s Book Club friend. Rebecca isn’t the typical 1960’s stereotypical woman and she encourages the Book Club to expand their minds by pushing progressive literature on the Club.
If you’ve read any of my other pages in historical films then you’ll know that these kinds of thing aren’t for me. I’ve zero interest in period stuff, even if the music is cool.

I actually did give this one a go but I got to the end of the second episode and I’d had enough.

I do believe it was actually worth the watch though if this is your kind of thing.

Availability:

Region 1 DVD isn’t a problem and is easily found at a reasonable price which is good as it doesn’t appear that Seasons 2 and 3 ever made it. Even more odd that so much effort was put into the Season 1 DVD with a special extended edition.

Trailer: