American Playhouse

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a Hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

In this Shakespearean farce, Hero and her groom-to-be, Claudio, team up with Claudio's commanding officer, Don Pedro, the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick and Beatrice -- a tough task indeed, considering their corresponding distaste for love and each other. Meanwhile, meddling Don John plots to ruin the wedding.

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.

It's just another day in the small town of Hamlin until something disastrous happens. Suddenly, news breaks that a series of nuclear warheads has been dropped along the Eastern Seaboard and, more locally, in California. As people begin coping with the devastating aftermath of the attacks — many suffer radiation poisoning — the Wetherly family tries to survive.

One night in November 1976, after his car breaks down on a road outside Dallas, Randall Dale Adams accepts a ride from teenager David Harris. Harris is driving a stolen vehicle and, later that night, when Dallas police officer Robert Wood pulls the car over to check its headlights, he is shot and killed. A jury believes Adams is the killer, but stylized reenactments and interviews with key figures, conflicting testimonies and evidence are presented to argue that Adams was framed by a corrupt justice system, ultimately leading to his exoneration.

A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.

Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the '50s. As the second generation become adults in the '60s, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.

In 1901, Mexican American farmer Gregorio Cortez is forced on the run from Texas Rangers, evading a massive manhunt on horseback for days following a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman.

In 1902, a Gullah family on the Sea Islands off South Carolina decide whether to migrate to the mainland, risking their unique cultural heritage.

An American-Chinese man brings over his wife from China to America, but the challenges of making a living and adjusting to a new life, plus the attentions of a gambler threaten their marriage.

Connie, the fifteen-year-old black sheep of her family, finds her summertime idyll of beach trips, mall hangouts, and innocent flirtations shattered by an encounter with a mysterious stranger.

The days leading up to the completion of his most famous painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat is struggling to make meaningful art and maintaining a relationship with his lover, Dot. Amid the scorn of the artistic community, Seurat's artistic ability thrives while his love diminishes. A century later, Seurat's descendant – named George and also an artist – finds himself burnt out and in search of what artistic path to follow, but he finds the answer to his future in the past.

Two diametrically opposite brothers set off on a journey to reunite with their estranged father but when their motorcycle breaks down while passing through a small town, they become entangled in local life.

San Francisco's Richmond District. A widow welcomes the Chinese New Year. 62 years old, she wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors. A fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll die, and a daughter, Geraldine, remains unmarried. Geraldine's boyfriend lives in Los Angeles and she's not sure she's ready for marriage, nor does she want to leave her mother alone in her declining years. Mrs. Tan's cheerful brother-in-law, Uncle Tam, tries to help out.

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.

During the summer of 1981, a group of friends in New York are completely unprepared for the onslaught of AIDS. What starts as a rumor about a mysterious "gay cancer" soon turns into a major crisis as, one by one, some of the friends begin to fall ill, leaving the others to panic about who will be next. As death takes its toll, the lives of these friends are forever redefined by an unconditional display of love, hope and courage.

In 1528, a Spanish expedition flounders off the coast of Florida with 600 lives lost. One survivor, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, roams across the American continent searching for his Spanish comrades. Instead, he discovers the Iguase, an ancient Indian tribe. Over the next eight years, Cabeza de Vaca learns their mystical and mysterious culture, becoming a healer and a leader. But soon this New World collides with the Old World as Spanish conquistadors seek to enslave the Indians, and Cabeza de Vaca must confront his own people and his past.

Giorgio, a young soldier, is in love with Clara. But they are separated when Giorgio is posted far away, where he meets the unhappy, unhealthy, and unattractive Fosca, who develops a passionate love for Giorgio and tries to make him love her. This rendition of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical was recorded on the stage with it's original all-star Broadway cast. Originally broadcast as part of "American Playhouse" on PBS (season thirteen, episode six).

On New Year's Eve 1928, in the New York underworld, a gambler sells his body to science, a gangster needs a transfusion, and a gambler is on the run

Disfigured WWII veteran Garnet Montrose returns from Guadacanal and enlists a drifter to court his former sweetheart through letters, leading to a complex love triangle with unexpected romantic developments.