Television series

All American

Name: All American
Genre: Drama, Sports
Released: 2018
Cast: Michael Evans Behling, Greta Onieogou, Bre-Z, Samantha Logan, Daniel Ezra

Sports drama

All American takes the classic underdog sports drama and sharpens it with real geography — Spencer's recruitment from Crenshaw to Beverly Hills becomes a lens on two Los Angeleses that rarely speak to each other. It's soapy, occasionally implausible, but sincere and often moving when it commits to the exhausting cost of moving between worlds. Comfort food with a conscience.

TVMaze rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like soapy, big-hearted family drama where the football is a vehicle for class collisions, friendships under strain and romances that keep tangling, and you don't mind a show that wears its heart on its sleeve.

Skip it if you want tight, grounded sports realism or quick episodes; the plotting runs long and melodramatic, and the games often serve the relationships rather than the other way round.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a long haul across eight seasons and 132 episodes of an hour each, with many storylines running at once and a steady willingness to let emotions play out loudly.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Friday Night Lights2006

The gold standard for this genre — small-town football as a way into class, race, and parenting, with performances so lived-in you forget anyone's acting.

But Quieter and more melancholic than All American; less soap, more slow ache. Don't expect the same pace.

One Tree Hill2003

Same CW bloodline — basketball instead of football, but the tangled love triangles, family secrets, and earnest melodrama scratch exactly the same itch.

But Even less restrained. If All American's plot twists sometimes feel like a lot, this is a lot more.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air1990

The original LA class-collision story — a kid from one world dropped into the wealth of another, and forced to figure out which parts of himself survive the move.

But It's a sitcom, laugh track and all. The stakes are jokes and heart, not season-long dread.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from All American

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Hoop Dreams1994

Both are built on the same premise: a kid's athletic gift becomes a ticket between worlds, and the family left straddling the gap pays for it. Hoop Dreams is the true story the fiction is quietly modeled on — no writers' room, no tidy arcs, just what actually happens when a school recruits a child's talent and calls it opportunity.

A three-hour documentary following two Black teenagers from working-class Chicago recruited for their basketball talent to a mostly white suburban private school — the exact engine of All American, but unscripted and unresolved.

But It's long, it's real, and nothing wraps up neatly. No season finale twist, just years of actual consequence playing out.