Trivia / Amerika

• California Doubling: Parts of the show were filmed in Ontario, Canada.
• Follow the Leader: The film Red Dawn, a box office hit in 1984, has the same premise (life in Flyover Country under Soviet occupation). While Amerika had been conceived before Red Dawn was released, it was hard not to see it as derivative. It didn't help that Basil Poledouris did the music for both projects.
• Genre-Killer: Its failure took a lot of the shine off of the "prestige" Mini Series of the '70s and '80s. Interestingly, this meant that, once again, Kris Kristofferson starred in an expensive epic bust that almost singlehandedly ended an important era its medium's modern history.
• Inspiration for the Work: As mentioned on the main page, a 1983 op-ed piece by Ben Stein (before his TV career), responding negatively to The Day After, was read by ABC president Brandon Stoddard. Specifically Stein's statement "Let's have a movie called In Red America. It would be about a few days or weeks in the life of several American families after the Soviet Union had taken over America," led Stoddard to conceive the idea for Amerika.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The mini-series was a ratings bust, critically panned, and was quickly made obsolete by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Outside a blink and miss VHS release by Anchor Bay in the mid-'90s, the series has never been reaired and is only available via bootleggers.
• Playing Against Type: Robert Urich, who specialized in manly, affable heroes, as Peter Bradford, who undergoes a long Face–Heel Turn over the course of the series.
• Prop Recycling: The two flyable Blue Thunder props make a reappearance, except now they're Black Helicopters.

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