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When you make a series about KGB agents planted in the United States, you can expect viewers to question every bit of authenticity. And creator Joe Weisberg knew this. Because The Americans is so subtle and has so little flaws, you could imagine it being real. And that’s the most important part. It doesn’t have to be real. But as long as it could be real, you’ve got a good story.
Working at the CIA for a couple of years and being a fan of John le Carré (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Weisberg had the know-how to make something authentic and unique. This while you would think we saw every Russian spy imaginable on film already. But as it turned out in last year’s film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, real spies don’t jump from the tallest buildings in the world to rescue Maxim’s Sexiest Woman Alive. They go home to eat with their children, who incidentally don’t know their parents are Russian spies.
The first season of The Americans is executed brilliantly. We start with a Russian couple dropped in the US who pretend to be Americans, but are actually spying on them. Quickly we’re introduced to their neighbor, an FBI agent obsessed with tracking down the KGB — funny coincidence he lives there right? And lastly a couple of side characters, who’ll play an even bigger role in the next season. One of them being an American woman madly in love with the male KGB agent Philip, while he is just using her to get information from her office (the FBI). This is also where the fake wigs and mustaches come in. The KGB must have had the best training in putting on wigs and mustaches. Because whenever they put something on and whatever they do, that stuff never comes off.
Weisberg described The Americans as a series about marriage first and foremost.
And that’s certainly the case. If they go on a mission or we follow the FBI agent during his job, in the end it always comes back to two people and how they try to cope with the crazy jobs they have. In that sense it’s a lot like Breaking Bad and how that series started. Where we spent as much time in the homes of the main characters as we did in other places.
Breaking Bad had the ability to transform almost every season and introduce a lot of different characters in the world they set up. It will be interesting to see if The Americans will do the same and how they’ll do that. A lot of season one was about if the spies would be found out. But I can’t see them playing that card for a couple of seasons again and again. Dexter and Breaking Bad both showed us eventually people have to find out to keep the story interesting and believable. So while The Americans is the best new show on tv, only the critical second season can show us if they’re here to stay. 
filmOA | score
82%
worth the popcorn
