In the spy game, intelligence is the most precious commodity. And in the world of fictional espionage, few authors of historical suspense deliver thrills with the crisp and unsparing intelligence of Alan Furst. BBC America's Spies of Warsaw, a two-part miniseries adaptation (concluding Tuesday, April 10) of his 2008 novel, loses none of its twisty allure and passionate urgency in the translation from page to screen (9/8c). Tension comes with the territory of late-'30s Poland, a country harboring refugees and dissidents in a murky culture of political intrigue, as everyone nervously waits for the jackboot to drop as rumors spread of Nazi aggression.
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ABC has been running a series of ads lately for The Neighbors quoting TV critics who trashed the show when it premiered in September but have since changed their mind or at least lightened up about this harmless time-waster. I was not among those quoted, for good reason. I'm hardly a fan, but even back in the fall, I knew there were far worse sitcoms to get riled up about — including elsewhere on Wednesday (NBC's DOA Animal Practice and the presumably soon-to-vanish mediocrity Guys With Kids) — and my main objection, then as now, is its occupation of prime real estate between two infinitely better comedies, The Middle and Modern Family.
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We were all a little stunned when Felicity Porter, the University of New York's most famous student (aka Keri Russell), showed up as a gun-toting operative alongside Tom Cruise in 2005's Mission: Impossible III. But the gamble worked. Nobody was talking about her haircut, that's for sure. In a weird way, then, Russell's role on FX's The Americans is a logical progression. She and Brothers & Sisters' Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, married spies who live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, but there's a twist: They work for the other guys, specifically Cold War-era Soviets.
TVGuide.com sat down with Russell to find out why she signed on, what's in store for the Jenningses and how Felicity creator J.J. Abrams had a certain prescience about her new job...
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Question: What's your take on the new FX drama The Americans? I'm sort of cautiously optimistic because I love several FX shows, but this one didn't grab me like Justified and the others have. I thought there was way too much action before I got any sort of character development — it drove me nuts to have to follow the opening sequence for so long without any context. I also found myself fascinated by the next-door neighbor/FBI agent (what is the story with his undercover assignment?!) and less so by Phillip (the husband), but Elizabeth (the wife) left me sort of cold. I hope it improves with more episodes. — Amy
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Felicity as Mata Hari? The mind reels. And yet there's Keri Russell, once America's sweetheart on The WB, bewigged and brazenly seducing classified secrets out of a Department of Justice stooge in the opening minutes of FX's engrossing spies-among-us drama The Americans (Wednesday, 10/9c).
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