Netflix's 6-Season Spy Thriller Is So Good, It's Getting A Remake After Just 8 Years

Published Sep 5, 2026, 4:02 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. One of Netflix’s most acclaimed spy thrillers is already getting a remake even though the show only wrapped up a few years ago, and this reboot promises to offer a fresh take on the ingenious premise of the series. It is tough to come up with a fresh new take on the spy show in 2026. It’s been six long decades since the heyday of shows like The Man From UNCLE, Get Smart, and Mission: Impossible, and the genre has been explored from countless different angles in the time since. There are sci-fi spy shows like The Copenhagen Test, which incorporate elements of cyberpunk into the espionage genre, and darkly comedic spins on the spy story, like Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith reboot from 2024. There are expensive efforts like Prime Video’s Citadel franchise and more modest, grounded thrillers like Apple TV’s Slow Horses, which wowed viewers by focusing on the humdrum drudgery of spy craft that is ignored by traditional outings in the genre. However, few shows have felt like as much of a thorough reinvention of the spy thriller as the six-season classic The Americans. Running from 2013 until 2018, The Americans was a period drama set during the ‘80s, at the height of the Cold War between Russia and America. The series focused on Keri Russell’s Elizabeth and Matthew Rhys’s Philip, a married couple raising their kids in a Washington D.C. suburb. Beneath their cheery, normal exterior, the pair hid a dark secret, one that will be reworked in the show's upcoming Korean reboot. Netflix's The Americans Is Becoming The Koreans Photo: Ali Goldstein/FX The protagonists of The Americans are secretly spies for the Soviet KGB, and their attempts to relay information to their homeland come into constant conflict with maintaining the illusion of their normal suburban life. Borrowing from Netflix’s earlier hit House of Cards, The Americans dared viewers to root for these duplicitous double agents, humanizing the spies trying to take down America from the inside throughout the show’s 75-episode run. In an interesting subversion of viewer expectations, Elizabeth is the more ideologically driven of the pair, while Philip is comparatively conflicted about his role as a KGB mole. While her husband isn’t allied to the US, Philip also doesn’t hold the country in contempt, whereas Elizabeth views the nation as an imperial powerhouse that must be taken down for the Soviet Union to succeed on the geopolitical stage. The Americans is now set to receive a reboot, according to Variety, titled “The Koreans.” Created by Made in Korea writer Park Eun-gyo, the show will be set in 1990s Seoul and follow a pair of North Korean spies posing as a married South Korean couple. The series is set to be released on Hulu in 2027. The Americans Is One Of The Best TV Shows Of The Century So Far With an astounding supporting cast including Margo Martindale, Noah Emmerich, Dylan Baker, Frank Langella, and Ozark’s breakout star Julia Garner, The Americans is one of the most acclaimed shows of the 2010s. While many shows may offer viewers flashier, more explosive depictions of spy craft, The Americans spends entire seasons building up slow-burn drama that pays off episode by episode, providing some of the medium’s strongest character writing in years. Russell and Rhys’s performances are career-best work, but the show truly excels when the domestic drama of its first few seasons opens up to explore more characters throughout the world of the series. By its final season, The Americans has built a believable world to rival Breaking Bad’s epic crime saga, and populated it with morally complex characters who never become mere caricatures despite occupying extreme opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. While Prime Video’s Hanna or Netflix’s The Night Agent might come with the gunfights, car chases, and martial arts acrobatics that viewers expect to see from a spy series, The Americans offers viewers an entirely different viewing experience. A rewarding, complex character study, The Americans has more than earned its upcoming Korean reboot. Source: Variety Release Date 2013 - 2018-00-00 Network FX Showrunner Joe Weisberg Cast Keri Russell Elizabeth Jennings Matthew Rhys Phillip Jennings Directors Daniel Sackheim, Thomas Schlamme, Daniel Attias, Kevin Dowling, Stefan Schwartz, Adam Arkin, Matthew Rhys, Nicole Kassell, Noah Emmerich, Andrew Bernstein, John Dahl, Kevin Bray, Roxann Dawson, Steph Green, Sylvain White, Alex Chapple, Alik Sakharov, Bill Johnson, Charlotte Sieling, Christopher Misiano, Constantine Makris, Gavin O'Connor, Gregory Hoblit, Gwyneth Horder-Payton Writers Melissa James Gibson, Stuart Zicherman, Hilary Bettis, Bradford Winters, Angelina Burnett, Sneha Koorse Creator(s) Joe Weisberg