From the very first episode of FX’s The Americans, the sixth and final season of which began airing last month, it was clear that the show was going to be something special. Perhaps it was seeing Keri Russell, who once seemed destined to be known forever as Felicity Porter, going down on an FBI bureaucrat to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’, destroying any preconceived notions we had about her in the process. (Re- watching the episode recently, I was surprised when she got in her car and immediately removed her wig. Her character, Elizabeth Jennings, would never discard her disguises so publicly these days.) Or perhaps the realisation dawned later, when Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” kicked in and Russell’s Elizabeth and Matthew Rhys’s Philip doused the corpse of a KGB defector with acid and disposed of it in a wastewater pool.
Whatever the case, the show made an impression. As it progressed, it lived up to its early promise and then began to surpass it. It boasts a lot: the most nuanced portrayal of marriage on television, an awareness of space that eludes so many post-Bourne action films, a soundtrack that bears us back ceaselessly into the ’80s, and an FBI mail robot that has become an unlikely breakout star. It’s the best drama currently on television.
Matthew Clayfield
Matthew Clayfield is a journalist, critic and screenwriter.
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