Beneath the daily headlines about Trump and Putin’s are-they/aren’t they bad bromance, and the ever-clearer mutterings of Russian electoral interference in the US election, formerly far-fetched and dramatic TV shows about spy games are hitting a little closer to home. The best of them, The Americans, returns for its fifth season this week.

While similar shows such as Homeland and House of Cards have descended into self-parody, The Americans has matured into a rich, textured and intense quality drama. And if you haven’t been watching, you’re even luckier: you’ve got four seasons of incredible TV to catch up on. While the first things that spring to mind when we think about screen spies are James Bond, John Le Carre and the dominance of the British Imperial intelligence agencies, it’s Stateside where The Americans finds a depth of passion, tension and Doestoyevskian dread that kicks the genre into seriously high gear.

Here’s an introduction for those looking to catch-up on all of the Soviet hijinks:

The Cold War: Not Such An Old War

Using America’s world-famous self-told tales of opportunity, reinvention and the dream of democracy as a contrast against the uncertainty and decay of the 1980s, The Americans finds its home deep in Washington’s suburbia. Based on the real-life story of two Russian spies raising their children and living in Washington caught by the Illegals Program in 2010, The Americans began in 2013.

At the time, creator Joseph Weisberg said: “a modern-day [setting] didn’t seem like a good idea. People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged at the [2010] scandal, because it didn’t seem like we were really enemies with Russia anymore.” While not seeking to directly spin off current events or stories, The Americans somehow finds a way to give insight into the uncertainty and complexity of our era by exploring the humanity on all sides of espionage and idealism.

 Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) are two Soviet agents married by the KGB and sent to America in the late 1960s. The series begins with them deep undercover, raising their two American-born children, committing ever more dangerous daily espionage and trying to build a very relatable marriage in the most foreign of circumstances.

With more fake moustaches and secret identities than a Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? Festival, it would be easy for The Americans to veer into the ridiculous, but it remains firmly grounded, never allowing the viewer to forget the humans involved with very real stakes at play.

Double Agents Everywhere

 By using the familiarity of family to explore the foreignness of spy craft and vice versa, the series provokes a constant doubling sensation for audiences. It’s like speaking one language and thinking in another, or trying to remember lies you have told — there’s always more happening beneath the surface than it seems (which was basically the entire plot of Alias).

The “Americans” named in the title are actually Russians, but it’s often when Philip or Elizabeth are on a dangerous mission deep in disguise that they are the most honest about their true fears. It’s the simplest parts of building intimacy with their family that terrify them the most. Everything in the show is rich with subtext and keeping track of the levels of subterfuge and subversion means the viewer is always following multiple trains of thought.

To counterbalance this, the cinematography and writing often allows us to just watch the characters being, without them saying or doing very much at all. It draws you in to feeling deeply for these people, even as they pursue missions disturbing every sense of right or justice you know.

While most spy dramas excise any seemingly feminised bonds such as friendship, family and emotion to better focus on boobs and bombs, The Americans knows that it is really humanity that creates truly compelling characters and stories. In the first season, Philip begins to learn more about his wife beyond the official story the KGB trained them to stick to, forging a fragile, new sense of trust as well as vulnerability in their marriage. At the same time, he builds a romantic relationship with his informant, Martha, in order to source information from her job with the FBI which blurs the lines between real and pretend. He also takes a little time to be an embarrassing dad at the mall with his mortified daughter, Paige.

While British Imperial model spy dramas insist on a stiff upper lip for their male heroes, The Americans explores Philip in all his anxiousness, awkwardness and emotional intensity. There’s a serious sexiness to the intimacy in the Jennings’ marriage, and while a middle-aged couple in suburbia raising kids sounds far less thrilling than Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager, guess what? It’s sexier by a long, long shot.

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The New Season: The Americans Under Serious Pressure

Peerless when it comes to tension-building, spine-tingling montages, The Americans has been pulling a range of plot threads to an almost terrifying tautness as they build to their final season in 2018. This year’s premiere is no different, setting up themes of disgust and decay amidst America’s land of plenty and greed in the mid ‘80s. It strikes a powerful note of nausea and horror when viewed alongside the Trump administration rolling out in real-time.

Continuing to explore the duality of everything in this show, the KGB’s Sphinx-like pair of handlers, Claudia (character actress Margo Martindale) and Garbriel (Frank Langella) quip archly to one another about The Jennings. “Nothing scares those two,” says one. “Everything scares those two,” says the other. There’s rot in the roots of what the Jennings thought they were building.

It’s easy to believe that if only people could be more rational or intelligent, we might find a way to escape Trump and his MRArmy and the havoc we fear they will wreak. While democracy and political progress are discussed as purely intellectual pursuits, the fact is that all ideals, ideas and causes are suffused with emotion — otherwise no one would care about them at all. There’s a huge beating heart at the centre of The Americans: full of love, family, the desire for intimacy, human connection and all the complex, messy feelings that make us all human.

With global uncertainty depicted in the upcoming season of the show and happening in real-time all around us right now, The Americans breaks the genre paradigm by showing how danger doesn’t always come loudly announcing its evil intentions. The people who love us can be the ones who hurt us most, those we consider ‘enemies’ can love as deeply as anyone else and, perhaps, most frighteningly of all, your enemy is just as human as you are.

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Courteney Hocking is a Melbourne-based writer and broadcaster. She has written for Good News Week, The Guardian & many more. You can follow her on Twitter @courteneyh.