Manions of America is a 6 hour mini-series for American television made in 1981. The subject of the series were Irish immigrants to the United States during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century. It was the first American role for actor Pierce Brosnan, co-starring Kate Mulgrew, David Soul and Linda Purl, and was directed by Joseph Sargent. Manions was written/created by Agnes Nixon creator of the now defunct "All My Children" a hit daytime soap for 40 years. Manions also starred Steve Forrest American actor and brother of Dana Andrews popular movie star in the 1940s, as Kate Mulgrew's character Rachel Manion's Uncle and owner of the powder mill in Philadelphia parts 2&3 of the three part mini series who begrudgingly hires Rachel's lover and future husband played by Pierce Brosnon. Young up and comer Martin O'Neill played a kid with a tin whistle.


The Manions of America was a three-part miniseries originally telecast September 30, and October 1 and 2, 1981. Set in Ireland and Philadelphia in the late 1840's, Rory O'Manion (Pierce Brosnan in his American TV-movie debut) escapes from the Great Irish Potato Famine to head to America, where he goes into business, opens old wounds with old enemies, and is reunited with his lover from the old country, British blueblood Rachel Clements (Kate Mulgrew). This expensive project was scripted by onetime Upstairs Downstairs staff writer Rosemary Anne Sisson.

This handsome romantic drama chronicling the lives of two 19th-century families -- one Irish, the other English -- and the American family dynasties they began, was the collaborative work of daytime soap opera queen Agnes Nixon (creator of "All My Children" and "One Life to Live," among others) and British writer Rosemary Anne Sisson (creator of "Upstairs, Downstairs"). The three-part, six-hour saga, the work of two directors and three photographers, served ultimately to introduce to American audiences Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, playing Rory O'Manion, who rises from immigrant to successful Philadelphia businessman and Union Army Captain during the American Civil War. Filmed entirely in and around Dublin (which doubled for Philadelphia of the middle 1800s).