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From the start, The Americans felt like something special. Telling the story of two KGB spies posing as an suburban couple in 1981 America, the show had a compelling hook and an attention-getting star – Keri Russell as a Russian spy! Could it live up to expectations? The answer was a loud yes, as a great pilot episode announced this was a quality show right out of the gate.

Creator Joe Weisberg and his fellow executive producer, Joel Fields, deserve a lot of credit for so deftly juggling The Americans’ different elements so well. In other hands, The Americans could have collapsed or just come off goofy or outright ridiculous, as we followed Elizabeth (Russell) and Phillip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) and saw their insane lives – running a travel agency as part of their cover, raising two kids (who they had in the first place in order to sell the lie) and, you know, going on various spy missions, complete with elaborate disguises, which often involve having sex with or killing various people.

But the scenario, as heightened as it was, felt genuine and engaging the vast majority of the time throughout the first season. It felt real and the Jennings were characters easy to invest in and care about – all the more notable given they are, ultimately, The Enemy, working against the United States.

An invaluable reason for this investment was, of course, thanks to the performances. Russell and Rhys are simply terrific in The Americans, playing two people who are asked to do the unthinkable time and again. She’s the hard-edged one; much more militant, much more strict. He is quicker to turn to sentiment or be affected by emotion. But both are very smart and very skilled and Russell and Rhys sold all of these qualities. We bought it when Elizabeth and Phillip were growing closer and sharing warm, genuine moments, while also believing these two could perform amazingly dangerous acts – and also be utterly deadly in a fight. It’s a tricky mix that not every actor could pull off so well. Continue reading THE AMERICANS: SEASON 1 REVIEW – THE SPIES NEXT DOOR

FX’s THE AMERICANS has its first-season finale tonight, May 1 at 10 PM, but the series was already renewed for a second season by the time its second episode aired. The story begins in the early Eighties, at the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, played respectively by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, have been married almost fifteen years, have two kids and seem to be a thoroughly conventional suburban couple. They are in fact KGB spies for what was then theSoviet Union.Elizabeth is a true believer; Philip is having doubts. More urgently, although the marriage was arranged by their KGB handlers, Philip and Elizabeth are actually starting to fall in love with one another.

For most people, working on a hit television series is the most exciting and challenging job they’ll ever have. Joe Weisberg, creator and one of the executive producers on THE AMERICANS, says this is the case, but he was in fact a CIA agent from 1990-1994. He says the inspiration for the show came from the real-life incident a few years ago, when a group of Russian sleeper agents were uncovered living apparently ordinary lives, though it made more sense to set the story when the Cold War was at its height. Continue reading Exclusive Interview: THE AMERICANS creator Joe Weisberg on Season 1

“You’re the one they want. The one they understand,” Elizabeth Jennings, or rather Nadezhda, a K.G.B. double-double agent under deep cover, tells her husband, Philip, in the season finale of “The Americans.” Elizabeth, played by Keri Russell, is explaining why she should take the more dangerous of two missions—the one they think is a setup—and Phillip should be ready to put their two kids in a car and make a break for Ottawa if it all goes wrong. It does, in ways no one involved foresees; the episode, like the series itself, is about delusions—romantic, political, bureaucratic, tactical, marital, fashion (the year is 1981). And parental: Can Elizabeth really think that her children “understand” a father whom they believe is a travel agent but is actually a spy and assassin who’s just staged a sham wedding with a deluded F.B.I. secretary at which their mother pretended to be his sister? Can the K.G.B. really think that Al Haig might attempt a military coup after John Hinckley shoots Ronald Reagan—a major plot element in an early episode? Maybe they can.

It’s often said, admiringly, that “The Americans” is a show about marriage that is dressed up as a spy drama. One of its premises is that marriage itself is a matter of dressing up and performing, and that those enactments, particularly when children are watching, can be its most genuine part. Paige, the Jennings’s thirteen-year-old daughter, and Henry, her younger brother, watch their parents like spies. They are the hard pegs in a marriage constructed by the K.G.B. as cover for their parents, whose decision, early in the season, to figure out whether they have fallen in love with each other leads to problems on the job and a separation. (“Hitting the pause button,” as Philip describes it, when they give the children the news over a basket of fried chicken.) It’s familiarly sad. Continue reading THE SECRET OF “THE AMERICANS”