''American Dreamer'' is an American

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

television series created by Susan Seeger, which aired on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

from September 20, 1990, until June 22, 1991, as part of its 1990-91 lineup. ''American Dreamer'' stars

Robert Urich Robert Michael Urich (December 19, 1946 – April 16, 2002) was an American film, television, and stage actor, and television producer. Over the course of his 30-year career, he starred in a record 15 television series. Urich began his ca ...

fictional character In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life perso ...

Tom Nash, formerly a high-powered network correspondent who was forced to reassess his priorities following the death of his wife. He decided to give up his career in order to spend more time with his children. To do this, he moved to

Kenosha, Wisconsin Kenosha () is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Kenosha County. Per the 2020 census, the population was 99,986 which made it the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Kenos ...

, where he supported his family by contributing a column about "real people" to a

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

. His editor, Joe Baines (

Jeffrey Tambor Jeffrey Michael Tambor (born July 8, 1944) is an American actor. He is known for his television roles such as Jeffrey Brookes, the uptight neighbor of Stanley and Helen Roper in the television sitcom ''The Ropers'' (1979–1980), as Hank Kings ...

), felt Tom was completely wasting his talents and drove out from Chicago weekly (a huge sacrifice, from his viewpoint) to attempt to convince Tom to return the world of "hard news". Other characters included Tom's zany secretary, Lillian Abernathy (

Carol Kane Carolyn Laurie Kane (born June 18, 1952) is an American actress. She became known in the 1970s and 1980s in films such as '' Hester Street'' (for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress), '' Dog Day Afternoon'', ''Annie ...

), and a friendly waitress at Tom's favorite local diner, Holly Baker (Margaret Welsh). This program was considered low-key. Tom sometimes "broke the fourth wall" to address the viewers directly about his thoughts regarding the situations he encountered. This philosophizing gained only a small audience and the program was cancelled at midseason, although selected episodes were

rerun A rerun or repeat is a rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program. There are two types of reruns – those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Variations In the United Kingdom, the word ...

the following summer. It is not related to the film of the same name.

Cast

as Tom Nash *Margaret Welsh as Holly Baker *

as Joe Baines *

as Lillian Abernathy *Chay Lentin as Rachel Nash *

Johnny Galecki John Mark Galecki (born April 30, 1975) is an American actor. He played Leonard Hofstadter in the CBS sitcom '' The Big Bang Theory'' (2007–2019) for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and David Healy in the ABC sitcoms ''Ro ...

as Danny Nash

Episodes

References

*Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, ''

The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

External links

*{{IMDb title, 0098743, American Dreamer NBC original programming 1990s American sitcoms 1990 American television series debuts 1991 American television series endings Television series by CBS Studios Television shows set in Wisconsin