Why It Ranks
The best show nobody watched.
Score Breakdown
The Review
The Americans is the most critically acclaimed underwatched series in television history. Joe Weisberg created a show about two KGB officers posing as an American married couple in 1980s Washington, D.C., and turned it into the most authentic exploration of marriage on television. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are devastating as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings — spies whose cover marriage becomes their real one, creating impossible conflicts between duty and love. The parking garage scene in the finale is the most emotionally wrenching sequence in prestige TV. The Americans is a masterpiece that more people need to see.
Fun Fact
Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell fell in love during the production of the show and are now partners with two children together.
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