18 Mar The Americans
I recently finished watching Breaking Bad, which I very much enjoyed. Much of the excitement from the AMC hit show derived from the increasingly intense game of cat-and-mouse played out as cancer-stricken, meth-producing, super-genius Walter White struggles to stay one step ahead of his DEA-agent brother-in-law, Hank.
After finishing Breaking Bad, I needed another source of dramatic fiction to unwind with so I tried out The Americans from FX (season 1 available now at your public library!) and noticed several similarities with the Saga of Walter White. The Americans, set in 1980s D.C., is very enjoyable, not least of all because of the tension created when an FBI counterintelligence agent moves in across the street to the show’s protagonists – a pair of deep cover KGB agents posing as a husband and wife. (“FBI agents have to live somewhere” explains one of the KGB agents.) The close proximity of the two sides – Soviet spies and American counterintelligence – adds an extra layer to the already dramatic stories of love, betrayal and espionage. Keri Russel and Matthew Rhys (pictured on the right) give very strong performances and, as an added bonus, there’s lots of nostalgia for those who remember the early ’80s!
