All along, certain viewers have found “The Americans” too grim to bear — too nail-bitey, too much stress on the throw pillows.
Understandable, comrade, but try filming it. The show’s intense late-fall and winter production schedule gives it a natural grimness that would be costly to replicate. Gray skies, dead leaves, bare trees and the occasional snow flurry cast a dour, Muscovite pall on the Reagan-era sunshine.
Set in and around Washington (and, increasingly, Moscow) during the mid-1980s, the show is filmed in Brooklyn, where, on a painfully frigid 20-degree Thursday in December, a residential street has been cleared of present-day signifiers for a scene in an upcoming episode of the show’s fifth season. Cars parked along the block have been replaced by a fleet of Iacocca-style beaters, and, once the camera starts rolling, a plain brown wrapper carrying the Jennings family — covert Russian spies Philip and Elizabeth (played by the show’s co-stars, Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) and their increasingly anxious 16-year-old daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor) — rolls up to a nondescript apartment building and parks.
It’s a big day for Paige. Her parents have decided that it’s time for her to meet their mysteriously calm but always stern supervisor, Gabriel (Frank Langella).
GALLERY LINKS:
– Photoshoots Washington Post – March 2 2017
