Question of the week #55

[treonb]

The Americans has received widespread critical acclaim, but has thus far failed to grow an audience equal to the size of a lot of other "prestige dramas." What do you think the reasons are for that?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first three seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[treonb]

I definitely agree. So maybe their biggest problem is that the people who like the drama are turned off by the idea of spy show and don't even give it a chance, and the people who want a spy show don't see what they signed up for and feel cheated.

[jae]

Support for the latter half of that: the pilot got a HUGE audience, and the network bragged about that everywhere, but there was a STEEP dropoff in ratings in the second week, and they continued to drop for a while before eventually stabilizing at something much lower.

-J