Amerika Television Show Reactions in Atlanta (February 22, 1987)

America Reaction 02-22-87 6

Amerika is an American television miniseries that was broadcast in 1987 on ABC. The miniseries inspired a novelization entitled Amerika: The Triumph of the American Spirit. Amerika starred Kris Kristofferson, Mariel Hemingway, Sam Neill, Robert Urich, and a 17-year-old Lara Flynn Boyle in her first major role. Amerika was about life in the United States after a bloodless takeover engineered by the Soviet Union.[1] Not wanting to depict the actual takeover, ABC Entertainment president, Brandon Stoddard, set the miniseries ten years after the event, focusing on the demoralized U.S. people a decade after the Soviet conquest. The intent, he later explained, was to explore the U.S. spirit under such conditions, not to portray the conflict of the Soviet coup.

Described in promotional materials as "the most ambitious American miniseries ever created", Amerika aired for 14+1⁄2 hours (including commercials) over seven nights (beginning February 15, 1987), and reportedly cost $40 million to produce. The miniseries was filmed in the Golden Horseshoe and southwestern Ontario Canadian cities of Toronto, London,[2] and Hamilton,[3] as well as various locations in Nebraska – most notably the small town of Tecumseh, which served as "Milford", the fictional setting for most of the series. Donald Wrye was the executive producer, director, and writer of Amerika, while composer Basil Poledouris scored the miniseries, ultimately recording (with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra) eight hours of music – the equivalent of four feature films.[1]

Genesis[edit]
Amerika has an indirect connection to another notable ABC program, the 1983 television film The Day After, which some critics felt was too pacifist for portraying the doctrine of nuclear deterrence as pointless. Stoddard cited a column in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner by Nixon speechwriter (and later, television personality) Ben Stein that appeared a few weeks before The Day After aired. Stein wrote, in part:

since my dear friends at ABC-TV have made a TV movie very rightly describing the terror of an atomic attack on America, perhaps they might consider something else. Perhaps they might make a TV movie about why the people of the United States face such a dreadful risk. They might make a movie about what life in the United States would be like if we lived under Soviet domination. Here is the idea: Let's have a movie called "In Red America." It would be about a few days or weeks in the life of several American families after the Soviet Union had taken over America.
Stoddard acknowledged that Stein's remarks provided the inspiration for the series. Stein received a quitclaim fee for the idea and otherwise was not involved in the production of Amerika.[4] Originally envisioned as a four-hour made-for-TV movie entitled Topeka, Kansas, U.S.S.R., the project soon was expanded into a miniseries.