[SoylentOrange]

The Americans is a highly sensationalized and fictionalized retelling of the life stories of Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov. From a historical/accuracy perspective, there’s basically zero resemblance of the show and the source material beyond the premise.

As drama, it excels in the drama around the marriage rather than the actual fact of them being spies, and has been praised as “fundamentally a show about a marriage”. If you’re looking for a spy thriller, you might look elsewhere. It’s very “American TV” and doesn’t really stray from the formula

[jackfoxy]

I watched the entire series, The Americans. It's thrilling and well-crafted television, but totally bogus as a representation of how illegals worked in the USA.

Illegals were/are special assets that would never be concurrently running so many different operations and engaging in risky wet (i.e. assassination) operations right and left. More likely they would spend many boring years cultivating their positions in society and a select few important contacts. That doesn't make for good television.

[pixl97]

Typically the best television stories are taking an entire organizations stories and distilling it down to just a few people. Easier to develop characters that way and keep the audience from being confused by actors that don't contribute much.

[Fnoord]

A good 101 on an illegal story is by Jack Barsky, on his own account. He wrote a book on it, there's various interviews with him, a podcast series (The Agent) and he got interviewed by Lex Fridman (#301). I recomment The Agent podcast series [1] on his (life) story. Also available on Apple Podcast.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/show/5DToOunQsM18OmGD5eVRXR

[tptacek]

The Americans : espionage :: The Sopranos : organized crime.

The Sopranos was not especially realistic. But realism wasn't the point; there was just enough verisimilitude to serve the narrative, which was a kind of morality play. It's the same with The Americans, which is at bottom more of a relationship story than one about espionage. (We agree, I think.)

A lot of research went into the show, but it shows up in the same ways research shows up in Mad Men.

Don't watch it expecting to learn a bunch of stuff! That's not the point.

(A top 5 series for me.)

[darksim905]

We clearly didn't watch the same show. The nature in which they use disguises alone was some of the best use in a show I've ever seen. There's also some very clever code words and traps that scary in their realism.