This year, ten sleeper that is russian were arrested in america after a decade-long FBI procedure. In 2013, Joe Weisberg produced tv program about them: The People in america.

Although the spy that is acclaimed occurs during the early 1980s, whenever US-Soviet relations had been for a razor’s side, it is abruptly the absolute most topical show on US television. Weisberg, A cia that is former operative based their show in the 2010 spy band, but chose to set it into the past, because—back in 2013—people no longer considered America’s relations with Russia to be fraught.

“A present day setting didn’t appear to be a great idea, ” he told Time in front of the show’s premiere. “People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged in the Russian sleeper agent scandal like we were really enemies with Russia anymore because it didn’t seem. A way that is obvious remedy that for tv would be to place it straight straight back when you look at the Cold War. ”

If Weisberg had been beginning scratch today, it is not clear if he would result in the decision that is same go their tale back in its history. In the end, relations between your United States and Russia today appear because strange as any show that is fictional on television.