My wife and I have been watching The Americans recently. It’s set in the early 1980s and tells the story of two Soviet KGB intelligence officers posing as an American married couple living in a suburb of Washington, DC.
The Cold War politics feel pretty distant but the setting is very familiar. I have to remind myself when watching it that 1980 was forty years ago. It’s as far removed from today as it is from 1940.
The world changed a lot between 1940 and 1980. Has it changed that much since then?
There are of course fewer screens in The Americans than there are today. No smartphones and no tablets, though there are many TVs. But the rooms, the houses, the offices, the restaurants all look and feel largely the same.
The planes are the same. The trains are the same.
I’m not making an…
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