The FX drama series The Americans is one that started off strong in its first season and then continued to improve in Season 2, eventually becoming one of the best dramas on television.  The 1980s-set show is technically a “spy series”, in which Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Soviet operatives who have been living deep undercover in American for years.  In actuality, though, The Americans is a portrait of a marriage, and it uses the spy thriller genre as a conduit through which to explore what it means to be married and what it means to have a family.  That’s not to say the spy aspect isn’t compelling (it very much is), and the very first The Americans Season 3 trailer is a wonderful blend of the show’s character-centric focus and spy thriller machinations.  It also promises to follow-up on that shocker of an ending that concluded Season 2.

Check out the first The Americans Season 3 trailer after the jump.  The series returns to FX on January 28th.

Via FX.

Here's the official synopsis for The Americans:

The Americans is a period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The arranged marriage of "Philip" (Matthew Rhys) and "Elizabeth Jennings" (Keri Russell), who have two children – 14-year-old "Paige" (Holly Taylor) and 11-year-old "Henry" (Keidrich Sellati), who know nothing about their parents’ true identity – grows more passionate and genuine by the day, but is constantly tested by the escalation of the Cold War and the intimate, dangerous and darkly funny relationships they must maintain with a network of spies and informants under their control. Their neighbor, "FBI Agent Stan Beeman" (Noah Emmerich) has already come dangerously close to discovering their secret, but was thwarted by "Nina" (Annet Mahendru), his KGB mole and paramour.