[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
MGM+ dives into comedies this weekend with the premiere of the half-hour series, American Classic, and I was in on this before I even watched it.
Almost 40 years go, in high school and college, my 80s Friday MO was to rent two or three VHS movies for the weekend. In 1988, my go-to on repeat was a French-Canadian gem called Some Girls that was a straight-to-video release in the U.S., meant to capitalize on Patrick Dempsey’s newfound popularity after Can’t Buy Me Love. Set and filmed in Quebec, it followed an American college student’s misadventures when he’s invited to spend Christmas break with the maybe-ex-girlfriend who had bailed on him and gone home, played by Jennifer Connelly.
When he arrives, he finds a motley, multigenerational crew that includes a deeply devout mother, a free-spirited father, a failing grandmother afflicted with dementia, and two sisters who don’t have any trouble stepping in to ease his heartache. But mostly he’s just a bewildered observer as their chaos swirls around him. It’s a lyrical, surprisingly poignant, gorgeous movie and I was madly in love with it. It was directed by Michael Hoffman, who followed it up with a completely different animal, Soapdish, a manic ensemble comedy set behind the scenes of a soap opera. Headlining the cast were Kevin Kline and Sally Field.
That brings us to Kevin Kline. Growing up in the 80s, he was everywhere. Sophie’s Choice, The Big Chill. Silverado. A Fish Called Wanda. And on and on. I adored him. After working with Hoffman on Soapdish, Kline teamed up with him again on a 1999 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He regularly jumps back and forth between stage and screen, but aside from VO work for Bob’s Burgers, Kline hasn’t done much TV, and Hoffman did one episode of TV 24 years ago. They’ve now reunited for American Classic, which Hoffman co-created with Bob Martin, who wrote for the divine Canadian series Slings and Arrows way back there. The new series mines their collective shared history of and love for theater. Kline and fellow headliners Laura Linney and Jon Tenney also carry executive producer credits here.
In the series, Kline gets to be wickedly funny again. He plays Richard Bean, a Broadway titan who’s to the point of his career that while he’s still commanding prestige lead role, he’s phoning it in. He’s also unabashedly his own biggest fan (it’s fair to say he’s a cousin in spirit to Oliver Putnam). When he has a very public meltdown that’s of course captured on someone’s camera and goes viral, his agent (Tony Shalhoub) forces him to take a trip anywhere that gets him outside of New York for a while.
The timing is fortuitous when his brother, Jon (Jon Tenney), calls with the news their mother has died. Richard heads home to the picturesque postage stamp Pennsylvania town that launched his love of theater and that’s still home to Jon, their dad, Linus (Len Cariou), and Jon’s wife, Kristen (Laura Linney), and daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque). The sea of awkward there is multifold — Kristen is Richard’s long ago ex, Linus is in the throes of dementia, and the local theater that was once a storied institution for the Bean family and a destination unto itself has become a dinner theater to make ends meet.
Right out of the gate, Richard’s tested about staying away during his mother’s final years and his father’s decline, a separation that carries some reasonable animosity. Add to that he, Bill, and Kristen are pretty plainly (sort of) functioning alcoholics who aren’t shy about airing their grievances. Kristen is also the local mayor, facing her own test about retaining the town’s charm amid the allure of keeping it financially afloat at the expense of making deals with the devil. Miranda spends her days before she heads to college with Linus and his beloved handmade puppets in his rambling early 1900s house while she also mulls pursuing the family business instead.
Despite the loaded deck of challenges about reconnecting years later amid overlapping, messy personal histories, their shared love of “the show must go on” supersedes the rest and soon they all join forces in a Hail Mary production of Our Town (of course) to put their town back on the map. That it’s a chance for Richard to publicly redeem himself is the cherry on top. It’s a fantastic ensemble — just go with it that the RL ages of the cast make their character ages and relationships a fudge. They’re clearly having a ball, and I’m just saying it here now that there will be GIFs.
The series took four years to get to the screen after it was initially ordered by MGM+ predecessor EPIX back in February of 2022. To its credit, the cast stayed intact during that long development cycle.
American Classic a fast eight, half-hour episode season, kicking off with two episodes Sunday, March 1st at 9 pm E/8c on MGM+ and streaming on its app. Here’s a sneak peek.
