American Dreamer is a situation comedy which aired in the U.S. on NBC as part of its 1990-91 lineup.
American Dreamer stars Robert Urich as fictional character 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, where he supported his family by contributing a column about "real people" to a Chicago newspaper. His editor, Joe Baines (Jeffrey Tambor), 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), and a friendly waitress at Tom's favorite local diner, Holly Baker (Margaret Walsh).
This program was extremely 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 the following summer.
It is not related to the film of the same name. Coincidentally, CBS, which produced the film, owns the TV series today.
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