11 best spy thriller TV shows to watch now on Netflix, Amazon, and more

Spy shows have a moment. The Night Agent came out of nowhere last month to become one of Netflix’s biggest hits ever, hot on the heels of The Recruit, another spy series that earned a quick second season. And Citadel, Amazon Prime Video’s lavishly expensive attempt to create an international James Bond-style espionage action franchise from scratch, will become a hit out of financial necessity.

After all the spy-jinx you may want to dig deeper into TV spy culture. It’s thrilling to see secret agents use all their tools to accomplish exciting missions, including computer hacking and hand-to-hand fighting. Because there’s nothing like a globetrotting, high-stakes thriller about people who work for an alphabet agency.

The 11 most popular spy shows that you might not be familiar with are listed in this highly-classified list. You don’t need a recommendation to watch classics like AmericansYou can also find out more about Alias — you know all about them already. Instead, I’m highlighting international series and domestic hits you may have missed. After you’ve read this list, it will disappear. So start streaming immediately.

The Bureau

Image: Sundance Now

If you’re looking for a realistic spy show, The BureauIt’s almost a documentary. This French series about the inner workings of the DGSE — France’s version of the CIA — is TV’s most emotionally and narratively grounded spy series this side of Americans.

Amélie’s Mathieu Kassovitz stars as intelligence officer Guillaume Debailly, who returns home to Paris after six years undercover in Syria. He’s having a hard time readjusting to his real life, which gets even more complicated when Nadia (Zineb Triki), his Syrian girlfriend who only knows him as his alias, joins him in Paris. Meanwhile, he’s trying to locate an undercover agent named Cyclone, who has gone missing in Algeria, and training a young agent named Marina (Sara Giraudeau) for her upcoming undercover mission in Iran. In future seasons, we’ll delve deeper into Guillaume, Marina and the other DGSE personnel.

Of course The BureauIt’s heightened to make it more dramatic for television, but the feeling is so authentic. The offices and wardrobes are nondescript in a way that feels meticulously planned, and the show’s workplace drama style puts the characters’ ethical dilemmas front and center. If anything, the show’s polished dialogue, Guillaume’s unstable identity, and Guillaume and Marina’s mentor-mentee relationship will remind you of Mad Men. French contemporary Mad MenInstead of advertising, the campaign focused on counter-terrorism. The show lasted five seasons, from 2015 until 2020. Showtime has begun work on an American version of the film, directed by George Clooney.

The BureauAMC Plus is now streaming the show.

The Family Man

Image: Amazon Studios

This Hindi-language action thriller is one of Amazon’s most-watched Indian shows, and probably a reason why one of Citadel’s first local spinoffs is set in India (The Family Man creators Raj & DK are the showrunners of Citadel India). The Family Man follows Srikant Tiwari (​Manoj Bajpayee), a middle-class father of two whose family doesn’t know that his supposedly boring government job is actually about as exciting as a job can be. He works as an intelligence operative fighting domestic threats like ISIS associates and separatist groups (the show’s closing credits display the headlines the storylines were ripped from). He’s an action hero at work and a sitcom dad at home.

It’s a very fun show, with crackling action, amusing dialogue, and a great performance from Bajpayee, who’s one of Indian cinema’s most decorated actors. You’ll be reminded of action comedy spy films like True LiesThe following are some examples of how to get started: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, though it’s a little grittier than either of those. The first two seasons have been released, but a new one is coming.

The Family ManPrime Video offers a wide range of streaming content.

Iris

Image: Netflix

This show combines undercover action and swooning K drama. The romantic spy drama follows Kim Hyunjun and Lee Byung-hun (perhaps best known in the United States as Squid Game’s Front Man) and Jin Sa-woo (Jung Joon-ho), who are soldiers in an elite military unit. Separately, they’re both scouted by National Security Service agent Choi Seung-hee (Kim Tae-hee), who becomes their boss and strikes up a forbidden romance with Hyun-jun. The guys’ friendship is tested as they both fall in love with her. All the while, they’re learning how to become spies for a top-secret organization that does whatever it takes to protect against threats to South Korea.

Iris The most popular series on South Korean television at the time was “The Most Watched Series in South Korea in 2009.” It is the most expensive Korean Drama Series to date. Watching it now, it’s not hard to see why it got so popular. The combination of exciting spy action with soapy romantic drama makes it irresistible.

IrisNetflix has the movie available for streaming.

Kleo

Photo: Julia Trejung/Netflix

The best spy show of the last decade is The Killing EveThe BBC series won several Emmys for Jodie Comer’s performance as the sociopathic, but stylish Russian assassin Villanelle. It’s a great show, but it’s a little too well-known to go in this list. Instead, I’m recommending Kleo, a German series that’s also about a female assassin, has a really appealing visual sensibility, and will surprise you with its weird sense of humor.

This fast-paced show follows Kleo (Jella Hasse), an East German woman working as a contract killer in the last years of the Eastern Bloc. She’s betrayed by her contacts in the agency and arrested for an act of treason she didn’t commit. After a few prison years, she is finally released when the Berlin Wall comes down. Once she’s out, she uses the techniques the Stasi taught her — like surveillance, honeypotting, and various methods of murder — against the former friends who wronged her.

Kleo is a hybrid spy-revenge thriller that’s one of the most consistently entertaining shows Netflix has released in a long while. Kleo’s outfits are dope as hell, and in a cooler world, her blue tracksuit would have been a popular Halloween costume last year. This show uses a colorful palette to subvert the expectations of a show that is set in communist Europe. And it will catch you off guard with jokes you’re not expecting.

Season 1 came out last summer, and it was quietly one of Netflix’s best shows of 2022. Netflix has a German period spy thriller. Kleo has been renewed for season 2, so if you watch season 1 now, you’ll have something fun to look forward to.

KleoNetflix has the movie available for streaming.

The Little Drummer Girl

AMC

The year prior to her breakout with MidsommarThe following are some examples of how to get started: Little WomenFlorence Pugh stars in the BBC/AMC series. Based on a novel by legendary spy fiction writer (and actual former spy) John le Carré and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook, The Little Drummer Girl It is a sensual and sophisticated thriller that follows in the footsteps of The Day of the Jackal.

Pugh is Charlie, an actress from Britain who sympathizes with the radical left but does not have any convictions. During a vacation in Greece in the summer of 1979, she meets a mysterious, handsome stranger named Gadi (Alexander Skarsgård), who turns out to be an Israeli intelligence officer. Michael Shannon, his superior, recruits Charlie to perform the most important task of her life: infiltrating Palestinian radicals that recently murdered the eight-year-old child of an Israeli diplomat. They are also planning further violence. Gadi and Charlie travel around Europe pretending they are a couple of revolutionaries to develop a story for Gadi. She falls in love as the two play out their role. He keeps his own feelings close to the vest, and Charlie doesn’t know when he’s sincere and when he’s manipulating her on behalf of his mission.

Park uses ’70s-style snap zooms and whip pans to great effect, and Pugh and Skarsgård look fantastic in the era’s fashions. Park is more interested in aesthetics and character than plot, and the slow-paced story isn’t very suspenseful. Pugh’s ill-defined self is both a strength and a weakness.

The Little Drummer Girl Is of the same piece asThe Night manager, another stylish BBC/AMC le Carré adaptation from the mid–to-late-’10s. The Night Manager is terrific and could have gone on this list, but since it won Emmys and Golden Globes and just got renewed for a second season, we’re recommending the comparatively underrated Little Drummer Girl You can also watch Flo’s career in retrospect.

The Little Drummer Girl AMC Plus offers streaming of the film.

Mission: Impossible

Photo: Bruce McBroom/TV Guide via Everett Collection

Mission: Impossible may be the only franchise in which the remake is more popular than the original. However, the original remains a great film. The 1966 series doesn’t have anything as wild as Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane while it takes off, but it will still suck you in if you start watching. It was one of the best shows of its era — it won the Drama Series Emmy twice — and is worth rediscovering if you’re on the hunt for a cool old show with a lot of episodes.

Everyone who’s seen Mission: Impossible movies will recognize the formula. If they accept the mission from an unknown, clandestine spy group, an agent will put together a team to complete it. The team uses a variety of methods to capture the villain, such as disguises, hi-tech gadgetry and old-fashioned muscle.

It looks great — Martin Landau’s bright blue eyes really pop on celluloid — and Lalo Schifrin’s iconic score still slaps no matter how many times you’ve heard it. It’s a great show to just let play on Pluto TV, where it has its own channel.

Mission: ImpossiblePluto TV offers the movie for free and with advertising on Paramount Plus.

Old Man

Photo: Prashant Gupta/FX Networks

ASK YOUR DAD IF THE SLEEPER HIT OF 2022 IS GOOD. He’ll tell you all about how complex the characters are and how great Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow are at acting. And he’s absolutely right.

Bridges plays Dan Chase, a CIA Agent who has lived off-grid for 30 years. His wife has died and his daughter lives with him in a semi-estranged relationship. Two very well trained Rottweilers live with him. A hitman enters his house one night and disrupts his quiet existence. Chase’s cover was blown after he killed the intruder. The agency now has him on their tail. Harold Harper, the FBI’s assistant director (Lithgow), is called in to help lead the chase because Harold and Chase have a long history. They share a dark secret about something that happened during the Soviet-Afghan War, and they’re well-matched rivals. Chase uses all the espionage tricks he learned as a CIA operative to evade capture — it’s been a long time, but he’s still (mostly) got it — while Harper knows what makes Chase tick.

FX has renewed the series for a second season. It features taut action with strong writing. Bridges’ and Lithgow’s performances are soulful, as is an ensemble cast including Amy Brenneman Gbenga akinnagbe and Alia shawkat. It’s been renewed for a second season, so if you didn’t watch it last summer, get caught up now so that you and your dad have something to talk about.

Old ManHulu is now streaming the movie.

Patriot

Photo: Jessica Forde/Amazon Studios

There’s no other spy show like Patriot. In fact, very few shows are like PatriotSteven Conrad, the singularly bizarre filmmaker who created them (Perpetual Grace Ltd., Ultra City Smiths). PatriotThis is an incredibly bizarre, black comedy for fans of show like AtlantaThe following are some examples of how to get started: BarryWould enjoy it if they only knew about.

For all Mankind’s Michael Dorman stars as John Tavner, a depressed intelligence agent who moonlights as a singer-songwriter. He goes undercover by getting a job at a Milwaukee-based industrial engineering firm that frequently does business in Luxembourg, where he is to pass along money to support the CIA’s preferred candidate in an upcoming Iranian presidential election. Of course, things do not go as planned — the mission quickly spirals out of control after John’s bag of cash is stolen. And he’s so bad at his cover job that he’s in danger of being fired by his tough but understanding boss, Leslie Claret (Kurtwood Smith, who is magnificent here). It’s never what you expected. His desperate attempts to bring the mission back to track are always a failure.

The plot is thrilling, but simply describing what happens doesn’t express what makes PatriotSo special Why is it so special? Patriot so unique are moments like when John sings a rueful expository folk song in the pilot, filling in his backstory, that begins, “In June 2011, the United States learned that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was fucking around with new centrifuges,” or when he gets attacked by five Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters and has to stab his way out. PatriotJust consistently strikes a sweetspot of absurdist humor and dark, tragic character drama.

PatriotThe series ran on Amazon Prime Video for two seasons in 2017-2018, but was not promoted. I urge you to start this hidden gem despite the cancellation.

PatriotAmazon Prime Video is now available for streaming.

Queen Sono

Chris Duys/Netflix

Queen Sono is a slick spy thriller that was one of Netflix’s first South African shows. Pearl Thusi plays the title role, an agent of Special Operations Group, which is a secret organization in Africa that conducts high-risk missions. She’s also the daughter of a revered freedom fighter who was assassinated when Queen was a child. So while Queen works to bring down a private military company/crime family, she’s also trying to find out who killed her mother and bring them to justice. She also finds out that her ex-boyfriend Shandu’s (Vuyo Dababula) is now working for the company.

It’s a twisty, soapy series that shows off a part of the world you don’t usually see depicted this way. Queen is a glamorous secret agent in the vein of Sydney Bristow or Nikita Mears, only instead of working for some kind of fantastical government agency, she’s dealing with the real-world problem of colonizers trying to impose their will on her continent.

Queen SonoThe show premiered on February 20, 2020. The show was originally renewed for a 2nd season. However, it wasn’t renewed due to COVID-19 increasing production costs. The six-episode first and only season is still worth watching for its sense of place and Thusi’s performance.

Queen SonoNetflix has the movie available for streaming.

Slow Horses

Apple TV Plus

This British spy drama is the anti-James Bond.

Based on the series of Mick Herron novels Slow Horses follows a group of intelligence officers who operate out of Slough House, a boring MI5 administrative outpost where the agency sends agents it can’t fire but wants to punish. Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman), is the leader of Slough House. Lamb has a slovenly appearance and a verbally abusive temperament, and he’s at Slough House because he pissed off the wrong people. But he’s still a brilliant spy. When he finds out his ambitious new charge River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) — who’s been exiled to Slough House for an embarrassing public mistake — is doing an off-the-books investigation of domestic far-right terrorists, he wants in.

Slow Horses is a workmanlike spy thriller that distinguishes itself with its witty dialogue and Oldman’s top-tier performance. It’s clear that he is having an incredible amount of fun. Two seasons have been released, and it’s already been renewed for two more.

Slow HorsesApple TV Plus offers a streaming service.

Tehran

Apple TV Plus

TehranIt’s a geopolitical thriller with a strong cast of characters that is more like HomelandThe show has more viewers than any of the other shows on this list. While its tonal gravity gives it gravitas, the tight plots keep it fun.

This Israeli show tells the tale of Tamar (Niv) Sultan, a Persian and Jewish Mossad hacker. She goes undercover to the Iranian capital. Her mission is to infiltrate and hack the electric company and shut down the power grid so the Israeli Air Force can bomb a nuclear plant without being detected by Iran’s air defense systems. The plan goes sideways, and she finds herself stranded in the country of her birth that’s the enemy of her adopted home. She turns to family for assistance when she can’t get home to Israel. In season 2, she goes back to Tehran to save someone she couldn’t save in season 1.

Tehran’s production value has attracted high-quality Hollywood actors — Glenn Close starred in season 2, and the in-production third season is adding Hugh Laurie. The series is a thought-provoking thriller that delves into the psyches of people who have dangerous jobs. TehranIt’s really good.

TehranApple TV Plus offers a streaming service.