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American Hostage: Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi in a TV Series Based on a Real 1977 Hostage Crisis
Confirmed
In Short: American Hostage, a new MGM+ series, follows Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi in a hostage situation inspired by a real 1977 event.
American Hostage, a new series on MGM+, begins streaming on September 20 and will run through November 1. The show is based on a 2022 podcast series about Tony Kiritsis, who took his mortgage broker hostage in 1977.
Shawn Christensen developed the podcast, which was adapted for television by Shawn Ryan. Jon Hamm and Giovanni Ribisi star in the series, alongside William Jackson Harper.
The series follows Fred Heckman, a radio reporter in Indianapolis, who gets caught up in a hostage situation when Tony Kiritsis demands to be interviewed on his radio show after kidnapping Dick Hall, his mortgage broker.
In the series, Kiritsis accuses Hall and his family of granting him a mortgage they knew he could never repay, in order to seize control of a 17-acre plot of land. Kiritsis wants an apology, immunity, and the chance to pursue his American dream.
Giovanni Ribisi delivers a strong performance as Kiritsis, who, despite his threats, shows enough pathos to elicit pity from Heckman and others. Jon Hamm portrays Heckman as cautious yet confident, reveling in the excitement of the situation.
The series is based on real events where Kiritsis took Hall hostage and placed a sawed-off shotgun against his head. The first two episodes are described as a promising start with an intriguing premise.
Despite strong performances and a solid script, reviews suggest that American Hostage does not quite rise to the level of must-see TV. Critics note that the series falls short of expectations despite its potential.
The series explores the chaotic media environment of the 1970s, highlighting the business-as-usual approach of the crew amidst the hostage situation.
What this adds
The series adds a fictionalized take on the real-life hostage crisis, emphasizing the power dynamics and media coverage of the event.
What's confirmed
- Fred Heckman (Jon Hamm) is a radio reporter in Indianapolis who gets thrust into the middle of a life-or-death situation when Tony Kiritsis ( Giovanni Ribisi ) demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program after kidnapping his mortgage broker.
What's still developing
- I truly believe that Jon Hamm is one of our greatest TV actors.
- MGM+ ‘s American Hostage is a TV show based on a podcast about the power of radio, a chaotic media-hopping smorgasbord that feels oddly appropriate when you watch the eight-part series that flirts with a number of contemporary topics but ends up being mostly well-acted, over-extended nostalgia for landline telephones and manageable institutional corruption.
- The series is set in 1977, and if you’ve seen Gus Van Sant’s 2025 Dead Man’s Wire, you already know a somewhat fictionalized version of the story, which was the subject of the first season of the American Hostage podcast from Criminal Content.
- In a country pushed by the counterculture and Watergate into a pervasive distrust of authority, Tony briefly becomes as famous as his chosen mouthpiece, which won’t come as a surprise to anybody who has seen Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, one of several stories that America Hostage calls to mind.
- Here is what really happened and what American Hostage changed for the screen.
- He rigs a dead-man’s line to his hostage, ensuring that the death of the captor will mean the death of the captured.
- Hamm’s Heckman is cautious yet confident, and clearly gets off on the excitement of the situation, where he now holds another man’s life — who he says he vaguely knows from attending the same church — in his hands as he acts as the intermediary between the kidnapper and the police.
- What’s most striking about the hubbub around the interviews and the hostage situation is how many ways in which it’s business as usual for the crew.