The Americans (2013 — 2018)
The Americans, a period piece set during the Reagan administration, was outlined by series creator Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer. The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of the Jennings family—a married couple of Soviet deep-cover agents placed in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1960s and their unsuspecting, American-born children. The story picks up in the early 1980s. The show’s creator has described the series as being essentially about a marriage: “The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you’re struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is.” Joel Fields, the other leading executive producer on the writing team, described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters’ experiences during the Cold War.
In 2007, after leaving the CIA, Weisberg published An Ordinary Spy, a novel about a spy who is completing the final stages of his training in Virginia and is being transferred overseas. After reading Weisberg’s novel, executive producer Graham Yost discovered that Weisberg had also written a pilot for a possible spy series. Weisberg was fascinated by stories he had heard from agents who served abroad as spies, while raising their families. He was interested in bringing that concept to television, with the idea of a family of spies, rather than just one person. Yost read the pilot and discovered that it was “annoyingly good”, which led to developing the show.
Date of download: 2015-11-11T17:22:34+00:00
Cast:  Keri RussellElizabeth Jennings (1-6)  Matthew RhysPhilip Jennings (1-6)  Noah EmmerichStan Beeman (1-6)  Holly TaylorPaige Jennings (1-6)  Keidrich SellatiHenry Jennings (1-6)  Alison WrightMartha Hanson (1-5)  Lev GornArkady Zotov (1-4, 6)  Annet MahendruNina Krilova (1-4)  Susan MisnerSandra Beeman (1-4)  Richard ThomasFrank Gaad (1-4)  Margo MartindaleClaudia (1-2, 4-6)  Maximiliano HernándezChris Amador (1)  Costa RoninOleg Burov (2-6)  Brandon J. DirdenDennis Aderholt (3-6)  Dylan BakerWilliam Crandall (4) |
The Americans, a period piece set during the Reagan administration, was outlined by series creator Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer. The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of the Jennings family—a married couple of Soviet deep-cover agents placed in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1960s and their unsuspecting, American-born children. The story picks up in the early 1980s. The show’s creator has described the series as being essentially about a marriage: “The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you’re struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is.” Joel Fields, the other leading executive producer on the writing team, described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters’ experiences during the Cold War.
In 2007, after leaving the CIA, Weisberg published An Ordinary Spy, a novel about a spy who is completing the final stages of his training in Virginia and is being transferred overseas. After reading Weisberg’s novel, executive producer Graham Yost discovered that Weisberg had also written a pilot for a possible spy series. Weisberg was fascinated by stories he had heard from agents who served abroad as spies, while raising their families. He was interested in bringing that concept to television, with the idea of a family of spies, rather than just one person. Yost read the pilot and discovered that it was “annoyingly good”, which led to developing the show.
