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More TV writers need to realize that infallible characters are rarely interesting. “As we move closer toward real, we think it’s a better show,” he said. Weisberg added that the Jennings’ occasional lapses-getting shot or slugged in the face, or passing along fake submarine schematics that led to the deaths of Russian seamen-add to the interest and tension. “Instead of fighting like Bruce Lee, they’re more like street fighters now.” And rather than having the two of them handle every situation that arises, they sometimes bring in operational specialists to handle technical tasks, such as planting a microphone in a CIA agent’s briefcase. “We’ve gone from having them be perfect martial artists to people who can get hit and who can be hurt,” Fields told me. As the show has evolved, they said that they’ve increasingly tried to present Philip and Elizabeth as realistic humans rather than fantasy figures. When I put my concerns to The Americans’ co-showrunners, Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, they acknowledged that the trope of the perfect spy is one they regularly wrestle with.
(The network’s other big note was that while Backstrom could make racist or sexist statements, none of the other characters could ever express sympathy for his views.) But a network lead, these days, “cannot be totally incompetent,” Hanson declared. Hanson resisted the network’s request that Backstrom demonstrate a Sherlock Holmes-like awareness of his own abilities and instead left it to Backstrom’s colleagues to make sense of his intuitive observations.
Persson’s version of the character might have worked on cable, Hanson told me, but on network television he had to be motivated-even if it was something as ignoble as his towering ego that drove him to solve cases-and he had to do his job well. Persson’s brilliant novels into a lazy, misanthropic, but capable American TV cop.
Before Fox premiered police procedural Backstrom in January 2015-the show was canceled after 13 episodes-I talked to showrunner Hart Hanson about how the title character had evolved from a lazy, racist, evidence-stealing detective in Swedish writer Leif G.W. The characters we watch every week can be addicted, damaged, and unlikable, but they must be competent.
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