the-americans-best-dramas-of-decade

THE AMERICANS
FX’s magnificently wrenching ’80s spy drama played out (appropriately) like a Russian novel: a densely plotted, deeply humane slow burn that we savored all the way through to the final page. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys were both terrific as married Soviet spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, working undercover to dismantle Reagan’s America while being eternally yanked back and forth between their love for the family they’d built and their loyalty to the homeland they left behind. Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields expertly ratcheted up the tension each season, gradually tightening the noose around Philip and Elizabeth’s necks until even we couldn’t breathe, and capped it off with an incredibly satisfying series finale that delivered quietly devastating character moments rather than big shocking deaths. The Americans somehow never won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series — and looking back now, that seems downright unpatriotic.