Acting
American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
At a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation, nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living. Watching over them during this 10-day retreat is the resort's director, Masha, a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies. However, these nine "perfect" strangers have no idea what is about to hit them.
Set fifteen years in the then-future year 1983, the series tells the tale of the crew and passengers of a sub-orbital transport ship named Spindrift. In the pilot episode, the Spindrift is en route from Los Angeles to London, on an ultra-fast sub-orbital flight. Just beyond Earth's boundary with space, the Spindrift encounters a magnetic space storm, and is dragged through a space warp to a mysterious planet where everything is twelve times larger than on Earth, whose inhabitants the Earthlings nickname "the Giants". The Spindrift crash-lands, and the damage renders it inoperable.
Honest and straightforward small-town Shirlee Kenyon chucks her boyfriend and heads for Chicago. Accidentally having to host a radio problem phone-in show, it is clear she is a natural and is hired on the spot. But the station insists she call herself Doctor, and as her popularity grows a local reporter starts digging for the truth. Problem is, the more he is around her the more he fancies her.
The city has been taken over by a vicious, Mob-connected teenage gang and their deadly leader, a mysterious Martial Arts master known only as Sonny. In desperation the Mayor and Police Commissioner hire karate expert and mercenary vengeance fighter, J.D. McKay, to save their ravaged city. McKay eliminates the ruthless thugs with pin-point precision until there is only one left... Sonny... McKay's boyhood friend turned killer. They were boyhood friends. Now they are enemies. One is destroying the city... The other has been hired to stop him.
Williamson plays a cop called 'Soda Cracker', whose partner was killed in a mysterious assassination. He is convinced that the murder was committed by his old enemy, Ivan Moss, played by Bo Svenson. Despite threats from the mob and from the police department, he vows to continue his mission to find the persons responsible for the assassination. Maud Adams plays his new police woman partner, who falls in love with him during their investigations. 'Soda Cracker' also has to deal with the fact that many of the police officers on the squad may be corrupt, and tries to break down the criminal network whilst finding evidence against Ivan Moss.
In this sentimental holiday tale, a young boy is taken away from his loving, adoptive household when his new mom is killed in an auto accident and his traveling musician dad is deemed unfit to care for him, being on the road too much. Now, the only thing that can help is if a cold, bureaucratic adoption agency caseworker sees the error of her ways and allows them to be together.
