An American Family

Fifty years have passed since PBS warned Americans in an advertisement that a new, 12-episode unscripted show would shock them: “There has never been anything on television—or anywhere else—to prepare you.”

Pat Loud, one of the stars of the groundbreaking 1973 documentary reality series An American Family, died Sunday at age 94.

Tonight, PBS will air a two-hour version of An American Family. The “Anniversary Edition” has been condensed from its 12-hour version by its original filmmakers, Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond, and debuts at 8 p.m. ET. If you haven’t yet seen the series that gave birth to reality television, which earlier this year was rebroadcast …

An American Family has been turned into a fictional film for HBO and has been rebroadcast on a few PBS stations, but now viewers nationwide will be able to watch the 12-hour series compressed into a two-hour version called An American Famiy: Anniversary Edition that was edited by Alan and Susan Raymond, the people who …

HBO debuted its film about the creation of An American Family, but the series’ producer has called the film’s plot fiction–and as usual, reality is more interesting and complicated. While the performances in Cinema Verite were strong, and the actors looked surprisingly like their real-life counterparts, I was somewhat disappointed by the film, which was …

Besides captivating and shocking the viewing public, An American Family inspired The Real World almost 20 years later, and gave birth to what we now know of as reality TV.

In April, HBO will debut Cinema Verite, a scripted film about the creation of the first unscripted, narrative documentary series: An American Family. It stars James Gandolfini as Craig Gilbert, the filmmaker who produced the series, and Tim Robbins and Diane Lane as Bill and Pat Loud. The network released a teaser trailer Tuesday, and …