{"id":289,"date":"2014-02-19T15:07:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T22:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2014-02-26T13:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T20:54:00","slug":"thrilling-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/thrilling-television\/","title":{"rendered":"Thrilling Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished watching the first season of The Americans<\/em> (okay, so I’m late to the party), and I can barely wait for Season Two to become available. \u00a0This is the most exciting new show I’ve seen since Breaking Bad<\/em> ended. \u00a0It meets my Number One requirement for addictive serials: \u00a0I can’t watch less than the full disk the day it arrives from Netflix, so even if there are four episodes in a row, I am glued to the TV set for the duration. \u00a0It also meets my Number Two requirement: \u00a0I keep thinking about the characters between viewings, going over their dilemmas, wondering what’s going to happen to them next.<\/p>\n

Set during the Reagan-era Cold War, the show features a pair of Russian spies who have been planted in America and instructed to blend in. \u00a0Elizabeth and Philip Jennings speak perfect American English, live in suburban Maryland (conveniently close to Washington, D.C.), have two lovely children, and officially run a travel agency together. Unofficially, they are two highly trained secret agents who as young people were assigned to each other by the KGB. \u00a0The conflict between the official and the unofficial\u2014not only in terms of their concealed identities, but also in terms of the problems this “marriage” faces and overcomes\u2014forms the heart of the show.<\/p>\n

The fact that it is set in the 1980s means that\u2014as in great films like The Conversation<\/em>, or great thrillers like Le Carr\u00e9’s Smiley novels\u2014the technology is not so advanced as to dwarf the human element. \u00a0There are implantable listening devices and coded transmitters, but there are no cellphones or Internet search engines, so all of the characters, both KGB and FBI, have to rely on a lot of personal and collective ingenuity. \u00a0Thus the level of tradecraft, like the level of plotting, is part of the fun of the show. But the interest goes deeper than this, for, perhaps to our surprise, we find ourselves identifying with the Russian characters and especially with our central couple. \u00a0It is they, and not the rather unpleasant FBI agents, whom we sympathize with in the cat-and-mouse games; we are always glad when Elizabeth and Philip escape unscathed and undetected. \u00a0And if they occasionally commit horrendous acts, well, these are generally less shocking than the equally cold and violent behavior of their American counterparts. \u00a0I have heard the show called “cynical,” but I would say it is the very opposite: a series that creates real feeling about people we wouldn’t necessarily expect to like.<\/p>\n

Finally, and above all, this is a show about marriage, and an intimately fascinating one at that. \u00a0The thoughtfully written script helps make this possible, but what really does the trick is the acting, and in particular the performance of Matthew Rhys, who plays Philip. \u00a0Donning various wigs and costumes as part of his job, he can disguise himself so completely that he truly seems to be another person; yet in moments of silent communion with Elizabeth he can also convey, with the lift of an eyelid or the twitch of a lip, immensities of intimate feeling. \u00a0Rhys is one of those British actors (he is Welsh, originally) who have come over to enrich our television screens, as people like Idris Elba, Dominic West, and Clarke Peters did in The Wire<\/em>\u2014and, like them, he plays an American better than most Americans could. \u00a0He is performing, that is, exactly the same kind of role that his character is: \u00a0persuading us that he is just one of us, and getting away with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished watching the first season of The Americans (okay, so I’m late to the party), and I can barely wait for Season Two to become available. \u00a0This is the most exciting new show I’ve seen since Breaking Bad … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[182,181,180,179],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-lesser-blog","tag-cold-war-espionage","tag-good-tv-series","tag-matthew-rhys","tag-the-americans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}