On-screen spies have come a long way since Sean Connery first squeezed into his tuxedo and waggled his eyebrows suggestively in 1962 James Bond film Dr No. They used to be two-dimensional heroes, with an armour-piercing quip always locked and loaded as they kept humanity safe from cartoonish baddies in their generously appointed lairs.
But nowadays, they are complex figures operating in a universe where black and white have been replaced by endless shades of grey. And no spy is further from James Bond than Gary Oldman’s rumpled anti-hero, Jackson Lamb, in cult Apple TV espionage thriller Slow Horses.
Series five has already galloped to its halfway point and you may already have enjoyed catching up with Lamb and the gang’s attempts to unravel a conspiracy to destabilise the UK via a series of seemingly unrelated (but in fact intertwined) terrorist attacks – including the bombing of a penguin enclosure.
As Lamb and his ragtag team of “joes” demonstrate, the modern espionage caper takes on all shapes and sizes – especially on the small screen – and you may already be considering your next espionage binge-watch. Here are seven of the best spy dramas to try next.
The Night Manager
BBC iPlayer
Tom Hiddleston is effortlessly suave as the eponymous star of this le Carré adaptation. It follows a hotel concierge who embarks on a radical new career as international sleuth following the killing of his lover. He does so to take revenge against a dastardly arms dealer, played with scene-stealing enthusiasm by Hugh Laurie.
Grounded and gritty in that distinctive le Carré way, the series bubbles with tension as Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine hops across the globe in pursuit of Laurie’s fabulously irredeemable Richard Roper. The excellent cast also features Olivia Colman as Pine’s Foreign Office fixer, Elizabeth Debicki as Roper’s enigmatic girlfriend and Tom Hollander as the baddie’s unctuous second-in-command.
The Americans
Channel 4
This addictive, thoughtful period drama is set in 1980s Washington DC and follows Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) – outwardly ordinary American travel agents with two adorable children. But in reality, they are Russian-born KGB operatives working together at the behest of Soviet intelligence.
Their marriage is a sham, and every day they run the risk of being exposed by the CIA agent who just moved in next door or – even more disastrously – developing real feelings for one another, which could compromise their judgement. Russell and Rhys are great as strangers in a strange land (and spoiler alert – fell in love in real life while filming the show), the historical accuracy is (according to Cold War experts) impressive, and the action is so thrilling it makes suburban USA feel like a dystopian battleground.
Deutschland 83
Channel 4
A Cold War thriller with a Teutonic twist, this German-made series delves deep into the paranoia of Communist East Berlin in the mid-80s. The rulers of the GDR are convinced America and its West German allies are preparing to unleash nuclear war – and so send idealistic Stasi agent Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) to the West to spy on their sworn foes. But once he’s crossed the border, Martin discovers the perks of rocking in the free world – among them a Walkman and a new girlfriend.
Back on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Martin’s pregnant fiancée Annett (Sonja Gerhardt) is left in the dark as to his whereabouts. Suffused in autumnal gloom, Deutschland 83 is a brilliantly gripping snapshot of the Cold War at one of its chief hotspots. Two sequel series – Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89 – follow Martin’s adventures up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Killing Eve
BBC iPlayer
Killing Eve is a rip-roaring rollercoaster ride, brimming with excitement, dark humour and a star-making performance by Jodie Comer as shapeshifting hitwoman Villanelle (an assassin with a thousand perfect accents). At least, it is in its first two series, as Villanelle and her MI5 nemesis Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) are caught up in a deadly game of cat and mouse across some of Europe’s most scenic locations – Paris, Tuscany, Berlin, etc.
But who is the cat and who the mouse? The tension is exhilarating and the dialogue (courtesy of a post-Fleabag Phoebe Waller-Bridge) sparkling. Sadly, Waller-Bridge left after the first series, replaced by future Saltburn director Emerald Fennell, who also exited and the wheels came off for series three. Even many of the show’s biggest fans have agreed to pretend that a damp-squib fourth and final series never happened.
Hanna
Prime Video
This underrated spy series from 2019 had the misfortune of arriving just as streaming services were churning out new content at an overwhelming pace. Lost in a deluge of dross, the remake of the 2011 Saoirse Ronan/Joe Wright thriller about a teen assassin is worth revisiting.
Esmé Creed-Miles takes over from Ronan as the girl born into a shady government programme to produce the perfect killer. Joel Kinnaman is the gruff minder trying to keep her abilities a secret – while, in the third and final series, the great Ray Liotta plays a government spook on her tail.
Black Doves
Netflix
Keira Knightley has never been more watchable than as a massively fed-up super spy posing as the loyal wife of an idiotic cabinet minister (Andrew Buchan). Juggling sleuthing and the school run is a pain at the best of times – but when her secret lover is killed, she is plunged into a deadly conspiracy that completely ruins her day.
An enthusiastically sweary Knightley throws up sparks opposite Ben Whishaw as a fellow member of her “Black Widow” secret assassin club. Joe Barton’s pacy script combines raw action and dark humour with an atmospheric Christmas setting that, despite all the bloodshed, makes contemporary London look like something out of a Frank Capra movie.
Tehran
Apple TV
The high-stakes intelligence war between Israel and Iran is brought to nerve-shredding life in this slow-boil Israeli thriller. Niv Sultan is a Mossad operative and computer hacker smuggled into the Iranian capital with a mission to sabotage a nuclear reactor, while Shaun Toub is the Revolutionary Guard commander hot on her tail.
With Athens standing in for Iran, Tehran is both a razor-wire drama and a compelling journey into a part of the world rarely depicted on Western television.
