'70s spy thriller Ponies hits a sweet spot between The Americans and Burn Notice

The 1970s and ’80s Soviet spy thriller is a genre unto itself at this point, and Peacock’s latest entry Ponies, thankfully, does just enough to shake up the formula to concoct something fresh. Created by David Iserson (Mr. Robot) and Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant), the 1977-set series follows a pair of American Embassy secretaries working in Moscow who are thrust into a twisty, dangerous cat-and-mouse game between U.S. and Russian intelligence after their husbands are killed during a clandestine mission. 

Game Of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke returns to television as the lead here, taking on the role of the overqualified Bea. While the actor understandably gets top billing, co-star Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus) steals the show as fellow secretary-turned-unlikely spy Twila. Clarke’s Bea is the more straightlaced entry-point for viewers into this fish-out of-water spy tale, while Richardson’s Twila is a quirky, fearless, and often very funny foil as the pair search for answers and try to survive long enough to find them.

Yes, it’s a spy thriller, but at its heart this is a tale of love and friendship between two young women who find hope in each other during a quest to learn the truth about what happened to their husbands. And luckily, Clarke and Richardson are more than capable of carrying and balancing all that weight and emotion without letting things feel too trite or forced. Across these eight episodes, you see their relationship grow as they realize they’re the only two people going through this particular experience. What’s more, their yin-and-yang personalities, when combined, make for a pretty decent spy. (The show’s title refers to “Persons Of No Interest,” since, as far as the Russians know, these two are just anonymous widows still toiling away as low-level employees at the Embassy.) 

Despite the on-paper similarities, this isn’t a story as dark as something like FX’s spy thriller The Americans. It’s more of a sweet-spot mix between that phenomenal series and USA’s mid-aughts hit Burn Notice. Yes, Ponies can absolutely get serious when it needs to, but this also is a stylized show with twists, turns, whodunnits, and laughs. 

The attention to period details helps the series sing, with clothes, cars, analog technology, and needle drops that make you feel like you’ve been dropped right into a lived-in 1970s spy thriller. To take things a step further, the show was shot in the 3:2 aspect ratio, giving it the quality of a decades-old photograph. (This aesthetic choice admittedly takes a bit of getting used to.)  

The Russian setting and well-executed production design (the show was actually filmed in Budapest) makes for a potent backdrop, and you can almost feel the paranoia and surveillance around every cobblestone street corner and under every shag-carpet rug. The place also deepens the sense of isolation and claustrophobia for Bea and Twila as they’re not only underestimated by basically everyone around them but also quite  isolated, negatives that they use to their advantage. (As the latter puts it, “We’re women. People only look at us if they wanna have sex with us or marry us. And that’s it. No one would ever suspect us of anything.”) Bea at least speaks fluent Russian, while Twila is forced to get by on her attitude and quick thinking, which can mean anything from flirting to get what she wants to lighting a fire to get out of a jam.

Ponies’ supporting cast fills out very well, with Clarke and Richardson flanked by the likes of a Artjom Gilz as ambitious KGB agent, Petro Ninovskyi as an asset, and Adrian Lester and Nicholas Podany as CIA higher-ups trying to keep the central pair’s operation from going completely off the rails. But our leads remain the show’s focus and biggest selling point—and their chemistry helps make this spy thriller a cut above Peacock’s recent stabs at the genre.   

Trent Moore is a contributor to The A.V. Club. Ponies premieres January 15 on Peacock.  

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