Joe Weisberg

In August, Rupert Murdoch’s FX picked up a Cold War series set in the 1980s titled “The Americans.” Liberals might have braced themselves for the worst. It sounded like some kind of Chuck Norris-style “jingoistic” homage to freedom-loving intelligence agents. But this is Hollywood, so the show instead focuses on KGB spies who speak perfect English, working to destroy Reagan-era America, which is not altogether a bad thing to people in Hollywood.

Joe Weisberg, who worked for more than three years at the CIA, first wrote a script about two  CIA case officers stationed in Bulgaria. Fox bought that script, too...but that project was deep-sixed. Boring. But exploring the daily joys and sorrows of undercover Soviet agents, that just thrills the Hollywood Left. Some things never change.