The Americans (2013–2018) is an American spy drama. The series, which stars Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, and Noah Emmerich, takes place between 1981 and 1987, when the United States and the Soviet Union were in the middle of negotiations to end the Cold War.
Premise: At the height of the Cold War, married KGB spies pose as Americans in Washington, D.C. while their neighbor, an FBI agent working in counterintelligence, begins to suspect their true identity.
The TV series, which ran for six seasons, follows the complex marriage of two Russian KGB officers posing as Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a husband and wife with two kids living in the Washington D.C. suburbs of Virginia. A modern American family of spies.
The family’s clandestine assignment becomes precarious when an FBI Special Agent, Stan Beeman, moves into the neighborhood right across the street. Every episode highlights the moral dilemma of masquerading as someone else and lying to everyone they know.
I was supposed to check out a few episodes, but I got hooked and binge-watched the entire six seasons during three weeks. I thought the series provided an extraordinary peek inside the world of counterintelligence. If you haven’t yet watched The Americans, you might want to clear your calendar, put on your binge-watching sweatpants, and hunker down for the ride.
Yes, the show uses dramatic license to increase the tension and action (there’s at least one murder in every episode), but the interactions between FBI employees, the look and feel of an FBI squad, the family sacrifices the agents make, and their commitment to their mission was brilliantly showcased in each exciting episode.
The Americans is a TV show. However, the FBI investigates actual cases of Russian operatives in the U.S. illegally for the sole purpose of collecting advanced technologies, economic intelligence, and national security secrets to transmit back to Russia. Learn more about such a case here: Operation Ghost Stories -Inside the Russian Spy Case. By the way, I would love to have the case agents review this espionage case on FBI Case File Review. If you know who they are, tell them I’m looking for them. (I’m serious.)
Of course, Russia is not the only foreign threat to the U.S. The FBI investigated a married couple living and working in the U.S. who were charged and convicted of spying for China.
Listen to FBI Case File Review episode 379: China’s Family of Spies, Chasing Chi (Part 1) and episode 380:China’s Family of Spies, Chasing Chi (Part 2) with retired agent James Gaylord to find out how that case ended.
