Play it again, scam

"American Dreams" (Sunday 8 p.m. on NBC, premieres Sept. 29)

Remember when Father thought he knew best, Mom was a tremulous Stepford wife, the Vietnam War was kicking into gear and the president was assassinated? Ah, the innocence. Period costumes and golden oldies can make any old days look like good old days. It's just lucky for everybody a generation came along to change all that, so that 10 years later Mom and Dad would be divorced and the kids would be on drugs. Set in late '60s and early '70s Philadelphia, "American Dreams" tells the story of the Pryor family, a conservative, middle-class, Catholic clan with four children. Two of them are teenagers, which can only mean one thing: Any day now, Dad is going to start screaming about somebody's hair.

Brittany Snow plays Meg Pryor, a 15-year-old who lives to dance on "American Bandstand." ("American Bandstand" plays a big part in "American Dreams," which should come as no surprise since Dick Clark is one of the show's executive producers.) Meg's older brother J.J. (Will Estes) is a high school football star who is starting to strain against the plan his father, Jack (Tom Verica), has laid out for his life, which involves a football scholarship to Notre Dame. J.J.'s girlfriend Beth starts trailing all sorts of upsetting notions into the Pryor house -- notions about psychotherapy and the Pill, courtesy of her progressive parents. And Jack's wife, Helen (Gail O'Grady), is meeting some interesting new gals who seem on the verge of introducing her to the other F-word. Jack is wondering when his "American Dreams" (deeply linked to fluffy green lawns) started looking like a nightmare to everyone but him.

"American Dreams" is as soft-focused and jelly-bellied as a close-up of Shelley Winters, and the message gets a little garbled in the nostalgia. You might find yourself wondering whose side you should be on. Is Dad innocent or ignorant? Are the kids going to change the world or mess it up? In this day and age, the mean old priest/coach who tells J.J. to suck it up and play football for the team seems a little insensitive to his tender, if inchoate, feelings. But, then, what? The kid wants to skip college so he can spend the next 10 years finding himself? If this is going to turn into another story about Woodstock and how much everybody cared or whatever, here's hoping he stays in school and spares us.

"Boomtown" (Sunday 10 p.m. on NBC, premieres Sept. 29)

A Los Angeles-based cop drama that takes a tip from Kurosawa's "Rashomon," "Boomtown" reconstructs a single crime from different points of view. In the first episode, a drive-by shooting at a youth center is seen through the eyes of a reporter, Andrea Little (Nina Garbiras); her lover, Deputy D.A. David McNorris (Neal McDonough); his volunteer wife; and the cops who investigate the crime. Detective Joel Stevens (Donnie Wahlberg) is a quiet guy with troubles at home. His partner, Detective Bobby "Fearless" Smith (Mykelti Williamson), walks around with a list of things to do before he dies (one of which is to sleep with a hooker, played here by the same actress who plays the porn mom in "Hidden Hills"). Scenes are revisited as characters go their separate ways, with title cards separating one story from another.

The characters are more finely drawn than on most cop dramas, and the dialogue is refreshingly digressive and true-to-life. Executive produced by Graham Yost and Jon Avnet, "Boomtown" is stylishly shot and makes good use of its City of Angels setting.

Coming next week: Just think of "Still Standing" as "King of Queens," only the same; a plus-size "That Girl" in "Less Than Perfect"; Alfred Molina plays a dissolute British novelist in "Bram and Alice."

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