If the FBI-agent-next-door subplot seems a bit contrived, Weisberg makes it work by driving it back to the show’s core family themes.
It just so happens that their new neighbour, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), is part of the FBI’s counterintelligence task force meanwhile the Jennings’ 13-year-old daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) begins snooping around, increasingly suspicious of her parents’ strange behaviour. Walter White and the Jennings share a similar predicament: the constant threat of being exposed. You kind of forget that you’re rooting for “the enemy”.Įnjoyed purely as a thriller, it has set-pieces that are as back-snappingly tense and violent as anything from Breaking Bad. From a dramatic perspective, The Americans contains multiple psychological and ideological layers, challenging the viewer to identify with a morally grey subset of society in the same manner those Golden-Age-of-TV provocateurs HBO have mastered ( The Sopranos, Big Love). Over the course of three solid seasons, this has proven fertile creative ground for some bloody great bingey television. The premise seems far-fetched, but Weisberg was inspired to create the show by an actual Russian spy ring that was busted by the FBI in 2010. All this while maintaining the appearance of an all-American nuclear family during the Reagan administration in the early ‘80s. They don goofy disguises, carry out covert missions – usually involving a lot of sex – and dutifully feed intelligence back to the Soviets. to assume secret identities as husband-and-wife travel agents. They were cadets of the KGB, trained then shipped off to Washington, D.C. No dates, no one night stands that blossomed into romance. The Americans features an altogether rarer union: the arranged marriage.įor Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), there was never any meet-cute. Plenty of current shows revolve around relatable relationship arcs, whether it’s a couple starting out ( Catastrophe), losing their spark ( Togetherness), or contending with the fallout from adultery ( The Affair). With the help of co-showrunner Joel Fields, he’s managed to funnel his four-year experience as a CIA case officer and love of John le Carré novels into an impeccably acted, dramatically compelling espionage series that balances its realistic, grounded depictions of tradecraft with the one of most fascinating, complex portraits of marriage on TV. It probably doesn’t hurt that creator Joe Weisberg was an actual spy. In comparison, The Americans is astoundingly consistent and drum-tight across the board.
I’m saying this as a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Homeland, a show that its most avid followers have to admit is awfully patchy, even at its best. The Americans is currently the best spy show on TV. Aaron Yap celebrates the superb Cold War spy drama The Americans.
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