‘The Americans’ to Resume Spying This February
FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans will return for its second season on Wednesday, February 26th, airing at 10 p.m. ET, TV Line reports. The series premiered back in January of this year, drawing an impressive 5.1 million viewers, making it FX’s most-watched drama debut. The show offered some of the best moments on TV this year.
Created by former CIA Agent Joe Weisberg, The Americans is set in Washington D.C. in 1981, following the lives and exploits of two undercover Soviet agents, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), as well as their neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), a shady FBI counter-intelligence agent stuck in a crumbling marriage.
‘Lost’ Creator on Why ‘The Americans’ is One of His Favorite Shows on Television
The cast and crew of The Americans gathered at the Paley Center for Media in New York to talk about the show in October. During the panel discussion, Weisberg revealed that many of the show’s most absurd moments were inspired by actual events, including an episode two plot line in which a young man is poisoned after Elizabeth stabs him with an umbrella.
As for hints about what season two of The Americans might hold, the cast was tight-lipped, though as Russell told Rolling Stone at the time, they hardly knew much themselves. “We’ve only read one [script],” Russell said, “but it sounds like the family dynamic is going to be a real focus. As Paige [the Jennings’ American-born teenage daughter] gets older, she could be a serious threat for everyone’s safety.” Indeed, the end of the show’s first season found Paige snooping around her parents’ basement.
Check out a short but tense trailer for season two of The Americans, in which a mysterious, unidentified voice says over the phone, “I didn’t tell them anything,” as the camera moves to show Philip and Elizabeth shrouded in shadows, hiding amid clothes in a closet.