Dancing to a Different Beat

Nostalgia and crime--prominent themes in the season’s new series--recur in a pair of dramas arriving Sunday on NBC.

Tender but laborious, “American Dreams” opens in 1963 with the happy feet of Philadelphia’s “American Bandstand” leading eventually to a somber funeral cortege for JFK after Dallas. Later that evening comes “Boomtown,” a stylish, high-sheen, entertaining crime-fighting hour told from the different perspectives of its Los Angeles characters.

At least the giggly, self-obsessed teenagers of “American Dreams” look and act their ages compared with the mid-20ish actors in other new series tilted toward adolescence.

In “American Dreams,” Meg (Brittany Snow) and her daring best friend, Roxanne (Vanessa Lengies), are not only typically boy crazy but breathlessly gaga over “American Bandstand.” That was Dick Clark’s signature pop music series that began on TV as an adored local show in the medium’s infancy before going national in 1957 and helping solidify America’s growing youth culture around music. Not content with just watching it, these devoted 15-year-olds dream of dancing on the show themselves, and Meg “can’t imagine anything I’ll do that’s so important.” Kids. Go figure.

As a drum roll for the era’s cultural turbulence builds, Meg’s unfulfilled mother (Gail O’Grady) reads Mary McCarthy’s novel “The Group” and ponders life beyond matriarchy and stultifying deference to her husband (Tom Verica), a solid family man and appliance store owner whose rigid attitudes soon will be as obsolete as the black-and-white TV sets he sells.

He feels the full brunt, finding inexplicable the changes rocking his traditional Catholic household: notably Meg’s defiance, his son (Will Estes) wanting to abort a celebrated high school football career expected to land him at Notre Dame, and his wife meekly announcing she wants no more children.

“When did my dream become not enough?” he asks.

“American Dreams”--and its pit stops with Clark (an executive here, and woven into music scenes via old kinescopes)--are themselves not quite enough. Initial episodes note such relevant signposts as class conflict and racism (racially integrated “American Bandstand” delivered its own influential message in that regard), then swiftly rock ‘n’ roll on. A sense of period emerges faintly, but much of it is surface, its tone syrupy, its impact fleeting. And after a while, hair-flipping bandstanders Meg and Roxanne are nothing if not cloying as they stumble toward maturity.

Meaty, no. Yet “Boomtown,” on the other hand, is nothing if not highly watchable, a prerequisite for survival against ABC’s “The Practice,” which resumes Sunday with an especially strong episode of its own.

As in CBS’ new “Robbery Homicide Division,” co-starring here are L.A.’s urban sprawl and its distinctive personality tics, some endearing, some maddening.

Think Akira Kurosawa’s classic “Rashomon”--projecting different views of the same truth--and you have something approaching the engrossing style of “Boomtown’s” self-contained episodes about violent crime that in coming hours include a fatal shooting arising from sex games and a murderous defense attorney trying to save his own skin.

There’s nothing distinctive about the murders fueling Sunday’s premiere, which begins with a pair of young girls being gunned down in a drive-by. Holding your attention is how the investigation is depicted, by juggling time and peeling back the hours from the viewpoints of the perpetrators and these regulars:

A pair of detectives (Donnie Wahlberg and Mykelti Williamson), two uniformed officers (Gary Basaraba and Jason Gedrick), a deputy district attorney (Neal McDonough), a newspaper reporter (Nina Garbiras) and a paramedic (Lana Parrilla).

The premiere is especially moving when relating a young fugitive’s post-mortem, but there’s an affecting back story, as well, for Wahlberg’s Det. Joel Stevens.

“Boomtown” is no LAPD whitewash, by the way. Though he’s a straight arrow, Ray Hechler (Basaraba) employs questionable tactics when he plants evidence in a future episode and, on Sunday, endangers the innocent when he recklessly rams and flips a pick-up truck during a high-speed chase through a residential area.

If that happened in the real L.A., Hechler would be an instant headline. As would married Deputy D.A. David McNorris (McDonough) for publicly grabbing aggressive print reporter Andrea Little (Garbiras) for a quickie smooch, which he does in a future episode. As would Little, moreover, if anyone discovered she was sleeping with this public official whose court cases she covers as part of her beat.

In a more refreshing fantasy, “Boomtown’s” L.A. appears to be almost a one-medium town. In early episodes, at least, there are no local TV pests to harass Little and her publication, who have the news all to themselves. Which is one more reason why some of us think so highly of this series.

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“American Dreams” will be shown Sundays at 8 p.m. on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

“Boomtown” will be shown Sundays at 10 p.m. on NBC. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14).

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Howard Rosenberg can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@ latimes.com.