@joelkeller Published March 1, 2026, 4:00 p.m. ET More On: Kevin Kline Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ on Netflix, a Thunderous Dud of a High-Concept Romance, Starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell Why Jamie Lee Curtis Is Having a Moment, Nearly 50 Years Into Her Career ‘Disclaimer’ Series Finale Recap: Based on a True Story ‘Disclaimer’ Episode 6 Recap: He Said, She Said American Classic on MGM+ is being promoted as a comedy, but it feels less like a broad laugh-fest than a witty character study. And that’s just fine with us, given that the characters are so well-drawn and the cast is full of some of our favorite actors.
Opening Shot: An actor wearing stage makeup and bushy eyebrows sits in his dressing room. We see his reflection in a makeup mirror; he looks worried.
The Gist: Richard Bean (Kevin Kline) is a veteran stage actor who is starring in a new production of King Lear. But when the play starts on opening night, he has to be shoved out on stage by a stagehand, and fed his lines via an earpiece.
At the afterparty, Richard’s ex-wife Polly (Jessica Hecht) tells him he looked “weak and broken” without any effort, which she thinks is a compliment. She tells him the reviews are all positive, including from the New York Times critic that always hated him.
Richard goes to a restaurant to sit at the bar and guzzle martinis by himself when he sees that critic get a table with his husband. Not being able to help himself, he goes to the table and thanks the critic while also insulting his writing; the critic’s husband told him that in the review, the critic liked the production, but not Richard. That prompts Richard to go off on both of them, quoting the play and even grabbing the critic’s cane.
The next day, Richard’s agent, Alvy Stritch (Tony Shalhoub) tells him that he’s gone viral for that meltdown and that he is being suspended from the production; in fact, Richard should leave New York for awhile until the heat dies down. Just then, Richard gets a call from his brother Jon (Jon Tenney) that their mother Ethel (Jane Alexander) died.
Back in Richard’s hometown of Millersburg, PA, Jon’s wife, Kristen Forrest Bean (Laura Linney), is chagrined that Jon even told him about Ethel, given the fact that Richard hasn’t seen her in 3 years. One thing she wants Jon to do is keep Richard away from the Millersburg Festival Theater, the theater founded by Ethel and Jon and Richard’s father, Linus Bean (Len Cariou).
One of the things he finds out when he goes to stay with Linus is that, while Linus remembers all of the productions they mounted at the MFT, his dementia is getting worse. Jon tells Richard to not mention Ethel’s death to their father because he just can’t process it. Then, looking to “tie up loose ends”, Linus tells Richard some news about himself that surprises Richard. Richard’s niece Miranda (Nell Verlaque) comes by and is happy to see him, talking about how she still wants to be an actor because of him and her grandparents.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Despite them being two very different shows, the basic “going back home” plot of Ameican Classic, created by Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin, reminded us of the just-premiered German comedy Crap Happens.
Our Take: American Classic has a warm, lived-in feel that not many shows achieve right off the bat. That can be chalked up to the small-town feel of Millersburg (the series was shot in Maplewood, NJ) and the excellent cast. The writing is more witty than funny, but on a show like this, we’re OK with not letting out belly laughs.
Let’s face it: It’s hard to resist watching Kline, Linney, Tenney and Cariou play off each other, and they’re all excellent here. Yes, we’ve seen Kline play an arrogant fop before, but Kline digs a humanity out of the character in a way that we’ve also seen him do before. We can clearly see the loneliness and pain under Richard’s arrogant facade, and his eventual desire to move back to Millersburg and mount a production of Our Town there is rooted in a desire to be a part of a community, given that he more or less isolated himself from the stage acting community back in New York many years prior.
Of course, Kline also plays the arrogance part of Richard’s character well, as he feels he’s the only one able to bring the MFT back to its original glory, ignoring Kristen’s assertions that if it weren’t for the pre-packaged dinner theater productions she and Jon were booking, the theater would have gone under years ago. At this point, though, it’ll be fun to see Richard’s arrogance playing off of Jon and Kristen’s pragmatism.
In the second episode, we also find out a lot more about the family’s history and why it seems that Kristen has such mixed feelings about Richard and the prospects of her daughter Miranda wanting to study acting instead of going to Penn. That history certainly deepens the story, and promises that there will be further exploration of everyone’s relationships as the show goes along.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s seriously hard to choose between Kline, Linney, Tenney and Cariou for this category. We especially love the scenes between Kline and Linney.
Parting Shot: Richard walks into the MFT and is alarmed when he sees a goofy musical on the stage and Jon and Kristen serving people dinner.
Sleeper Star: Tony Shalhoub is his usual funny self as the exasperated Alvy, and Nell Verlaque’s Miranda brings a bit of teenage angst, and a lot of humanity, to the show.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Polly’s date to the play — her divorce attorney — asks Richard how he memorizes all of those lines, Polly admonishes him: “Don’t say that. Only idiots say that.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. American Classic isn’t going to make you laugh out loud, but its excellent cast and warm small-town-and-family feeling will be more than enough to keep you watching.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
