Series bring in ever-nastier weapons
The Americans is the latest series to include biological warfare as part of storyline
Despite being set in the 1980s, the spy drama The Americans has a reputation for storylines that reflect the interests of its modern-day audiences, be it the Soviet-Afghan War or religion and teenage rebellion. This season, which premiered Wednesday on FX Canada, the threat is even more blatant as Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell’s expertly trained KGB spies now must add handling biological weaponry to the skills sections of their curriculum vitae.
American creator Joe Weisberg, head writer on the series, said the idea for this storyline came after he and fellow executive producer Joel Fields learned that the Soviets had spent decades building what he called a “tremendous amount of biological weapons in the event there was a nuclear exchange. They wanted a second set of weapons in case their nuclear weapons got wiped out.”
“It seemed interesting and frightening. And also, because there have been so many movies and TV shows that have dealt with this topic, that made it very appealing to us because we love to subvert the genre,” Weisberg said.
“How do we do a version of it that is our spies, whom we care about, living in suburban Virginia and having to deal with the frightening aspects but also the moral aspects of having to steal certain pathogens? How does that filter in our lives?”
Biological and chemical warfare have routinely infiltrated entertainment programming just as they lead newspaper headlines and TV newsmagazine reports. They’ve popped up in series as diverse as The 100 and Blindspot.
Upcoming series Containment, which will soon air on Global, deals with the aftermath of a viral outbreak started under mysterious, possibly terrorism-related, circumstances. (And, as the most ardent connoisseurs of hate-watch TV will tell you, the U.S. Marine Corps’ supposed use of sarin was a catalyst for another story in the second season of The Newsroom in 2013.)
But biological and chemical weapons stories lend themselves especially well to the espionage genre. The most recent season of Homeland featured a character tortured with sarin gas as well as a plot to leak the same substance in a Berlin subway station.
In April, AMC will premiere The Night Manager, a co-production with the BBC that is currently airing in the U.K.
The series is an update of the 1993 John le Carré novel, featuring Hugh Laurie as Richard Onslow Roper, a black market dealer of arms and chemical weaponry also described as “the worst man in the world.”
His public persona is that of a self- made philanthropist who runs refugee camps and delivers TED-style talks. Tom Hiddleston also stars as Jonathan Pine, an agent working to bring down Roper.
AMC declined to comment for this story, but Laurie addressed the idea of showing the behind-the-scenes mechanics of arms deals (and the megalomaniacs who profiteer from them) during The Night Manager’s Television Critics Association press day in January in Pasadena, Calif.
“The violence that he does, the violence that he brings to the world and profits from, may as well (be) psychotic,” Laurie said of Roper, adding, “It’s not good for one’s sanity, I think, to be able to operate unopposed, and this is a man who has created a world for himself where he can operate unopposed, unchallenged.”
With The Americans, the situation is less glamorous. Although the series is full of wigs, disguises and false personalities, it remains a show about the people on the ground and what they are giving up in the name of what they are taught is the greater good.
“The whole trope of the spy genre is how exciting it is to be a spy; you want to be James Bond. And the whole concept of this show is how awful it is to be a spy because spies are soldiers,” said Fields.
“You can make a war film that makes war seem heroic, but you talk to anybody who’s actually been on the front line, and they can believe completely in the justification of their cause and the righteousness of their battle, but nobody wants to be at war.”