How much of Swingtown is real and how much is pure fiction? According to Mike Kelley, Swingtown's creator, there are elements in the show that come right from his childhood memories of growing up on the North Shore, a trendy suburb of Chicago. But the sex and the swinging? That's mostly creative license.

So were there really sex parties and swinging in the Kelley home? "You know, it comes from imagination, for the most part."

Inspired by 1976, the era of women's liberation, disco-dancing, the end of the Vietnam War, and sexual freedom thanks to the pill and no AIDS, Kelley balances the fantastic elements with nostalgia.