The American Dream

The internationally acclaimed documentary series that recast the story of a nation through the voices that history forgot. 

No society has ever encouraged its people to dream so extravagantly — or with such expectation — as America. But is the American Dream a birthright or an illusion? 

Narrated by Peter Fonda and premiering on BBC Television and Discovery, this series follows ten families across three generations as they go in search of that dream. Speaking from the heart, they open their pasts — their yearnings and expectations, their struggles, their staggering achievements, and their bitter disappointments. Their testimony is woven together with unique and previously unseen archive material — home movies, personal letters, diaries, and newsreel — to form a narrative both sweeping in scope and deeply intimate in character. 

The series moves through the great events of modern American history — the Depression, World War Two, the civil rights movement, the student revolts of the 1960s, Vietnam, the Reagan era — but recasts them in an original and provocative light. Not through the eyes of presidents or generals, but through the ordinary men and women whose voices usually go unheard. 

The result is both an epic history of a nation and an intimate saga of lives lived in its shadow — a film that challenges the mythology of the land of opportunity with humanity, rigour, and extraordinary access.