American Dreams

Series Similar to American Dreams

If you enjoyed American Dreams, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. October Road

   2007 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile.

   Can you ever really go home again? That's the question that confronts acclaimed novelist Nick Garrett when he returns home -- after being away for ten years -- to take up an offer to teach a one-day course at Dufresne College in his native Knights Ridge, Massachusetts. But once back, Nick finds the response to his homecoming less than effusive; he's had no contact with family or friends since leaving, and some resent how they were portrayed as characters in his novel.

2. The West Wing

   1999 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.6), also on NBC.

   The entire White House staff bristles with activity when it's learned that the President injured himself during a bicycle accident, and his absence becomes a factor as chief of staff Leo McGarry must juggle a host of impending crises, including a mass boatlift of Cuban refugees approaching the Florida coast and the reaction of conservative Christians to a controversial televised comment by deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman.

3. State of Play

   2003 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   The serial begins with the murder of a young man, in what appears to be a drug-related killing, and the apparently coincidental death of Sonia Baker, the young researcher for MP Stephen Collins (Morrissey). As the deaths are investigated by journalist Cal McCaffrey of The Herald (Simm) and his colleagues (including Kelly Macdonald as Della Smith and Bill Nighy as editor Cameron Foster) it appears that not only were the deaths connected, but that a conspiracy links them with oil industry-backed corruption of high-ranking British government ministers.

4. Jack & Bobby

   2004 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   If "greatness is thrust upon us," as Winston Churchill once said, then it stands to reason that those who are destined for greatness are rarely aware of it. Take Jack and Bobby McCallister for example: two bright young brothers growing up under the watchful eye of their eccentric single mother Grace McCallister. Grace's personality is a force of nature destined to shape both of these young men's lives and secure one a place in the history books - as President of the United States.

5. Smash

   2012 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, also on NBC.

   The hit-making Broadway writing team of Julia Houston and Tom Levitt unites with producer Eileen Rand to create a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and seasoned chorus girl Ivy Lynn vies with newcomer Karen Cartwright for the dream role.

6. The Playboy Club

   2011 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, also on NBC.

   The Playboy Club is a provocative drama about a time and place that challenged the social mores, where a visionary entrepreneur created an empire and an icon changed American culture. It's the early '60s, and the legendary Playboy Club in Chicago is the door to all of your fantasies -- and the key is the most sought-after status symbol of its kind. Inside the seductive world of the bunny, the epitome of beauty and service, the clientele rubs shoulders with the decade's biggest mobsters, politicos and entertainers.

7. The Newsroom

   2012 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.4).

   The Newsroom follows the members of a cable news team on their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of a fickle audience, corporate mandates and tangled personal relationships.

8. Our Friends in the North

   1996 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   A nine part series depicting the varying fortunes of four friends - Nicky, Geordie, Mary and Tosker - from the optimistic times of 1964 to the uncertainties of 1995. Taking nine pivotal years (1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1995) the personal lives of the characters become intertwined with the political struggles of their home town of Newcastle, and the capital, London. We also see the machinations behind the scenes that affect their lives, often for the worse: slum housing projects, police corruption, the rise of Thatcherism, political sleaze, and specific events like the 1984 Miners' Strike.

9. Olive Kitteridge

   2014 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   Based on Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, Olive Kitteridge tells the poignantly sweet, acerbically funny and devastatingly tragic story of a seemingly placid New England town wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, told through the lens of a woman whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and a staunch moral center.

10. Reckless

    2014 · Drama · ended

    Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

    Reckless is set in Charleston, S.C., where a gorgeous Yankee litigator and a charming southern attorney must hide their intense mutual attraction as a police sex scandal threatens to tear the city apart.