9 Spy Shows Where Every Episode Is a Masterpiece

Image via AMC Published Aug 12, 2026, 11:01 PM EDT Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter. Sign in to your Collider account The spy show is one of TV's greatest cheat codes. Every scene has a secret in it. Every conversation is really two conversations. Every marriage is a slow-burn thriller because one person is definitely lying, and the other one is probably lying back. Give a good actor a fake identity and a boss who might have them killed and you've got a series. Add a spouse who doesn't know, a kid who's starting to suspect, and a colleague who's a little too curious, and you've got a great one. It's a soap opera with better tailoring and a genre that has been feeding television its best material for decades with no sign of slowing down. What separates a great spy series from a merely competent one is usually restraint. The genre rewards writers who understand that paranoia is a slow burn and that trade craft is only interesting when it costs somebody something. The best of them treat the mission as an excuse to sit with a person who has hollowed themselves out to do it. That's why we keep coming back. It isn't the gadgets or the exotic locations, though those help. It's the pleasure of watching someone lie to another person's face, and then, to themselves. The shows below pull this off across their entire runs. No skippable installments, no filler episodes. Just week after week of the good stuff. 'Slow Horses' (2022–Present) Slow Horses, Apple TV's crown jewel, runs six episodes a season and does not squander a single one. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the flatulent, brilliant boss of Slough House, where MI5 exiles get sent to rot doing tedious admin. Every year, one of their humiliating little assignments blooms into something that shakes Regent's Park to its foundations. Around Lamb orbits a cast of screw-ups you grow to love: Jack Lowden's cocky-but-ruined River Cartwright, Saskia Reeves' unflappable Catherine Standish, and Rosalind Eleazar's Louisa Guy. Six seasons in, and creator Will Smith has yet to file a bad script. The show adapts Mick Herron's novels almost in order, one book per season, which gives it a tight literary spine most streaming shows lack. It's funny, brutal, and unusually respectful of your time. 'Killing Eve' (2018–2022) Image via BBC America While Killing Eve's back half is more divisive than its flawless beginning, across four seasons, the show never made anything you'd call boring. Sandra Oh's Eve Polastri is a bored MI5 desk jockey who becomes obsessed with a chic Russian assassin named Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer in the performance that convinced the world she was a bona fide movie star. They chase each other across Europe. They flirt through knife fights. They fall into something that is almost love and definitely not healthy. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's first season set a tone every subsequent showrunner tried to match: campy, cruel, dressed head to toe in couture and, sometimes even, Elton John cosplay. Even in the messier later years, Comer is doing enough to keep any single episode watchable on its own. 'Alias' (2001–2006) Image via ABC J. J. Abrams' 2001 breakout gave Jennifer Garner the role of Sydney Bristow, a grad student who thinks she works for the CIA and discovers, in the pilot, that she's actually been working for the bad guys the whole time. She spends the next five seasons trying to take them down from the inside while wearing wigs of every conceivable color. Ron Rifkin, Victor Garber, and Michael Vartan round out a cast that sold everything right alongside her, including a convoluted Rambaldi mythology subplot. Yes, Season 3 gets weird. Season 4 resets the deck. Season 5 loses Vartan and gains a pregnant Garner to work around. The show's confidence in its own bananas premise carries you through, and every hour delivers at least one perfectly executed set piece. Very few network dramas of that era have aged this well. 'The Americans' (2013–2018) Image via FX With six seasons and 75 episodes, creator Joe Weisberg (himself ex-CIA) turned in one of the most emotionally punishing series of the peak TV era. In The Americans, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two KGB spies posing as suburban D.C. travel agents in the Reagan '80s, raising two American kids who have no idea their parents kill people for the Motherland. Noah Emmerich plays the FBI counterintelligence agent who lives across the street. Awkward... The show got better every year, which is close to unheard of. Its finale is one of the great endings in television history, and the road to it is paved with episodes that teeter between tense escapes, thrilling car chases, murder, marriage counseling, parenting woes, and evading nosy neighbors. If you have somehow avoided it, we envy the fact you now get to experience it for the first time. Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would BeYour Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn't work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back. 🎖️Rambo 🍸James Bond 🏺Indiana Jones 🔧John McClane 🎭Ethan Hunt FIND YOUR PARTNER → 01 You're dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you. ASomeone who already has three contingency plans running and is calmly working through all of them. BSomeone who reads the terrain instinctively and knows exactly how to use it against the enemy. CSomeone who keeps their nerve and their sense of humour when everything is falling apart. DSomeone who knows the history of wherever we are and what we're walking into. ESomeone with the right contact, the right cover identity, and the right exit already arranged. NEXT QUESTION → 02 You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission. AOn foot through terrain no one else would attempt — I move where vehicles can't follow. BOn a motorcycle, a cargo plane, or anything else that gets me there before I think too hard about it. CIn something that belongs to someone else — borrowed, stolen, or improvised under fire. DFirst class, with a cover identity and a gadget that does something I won't explain until it's needed. EBy whatever means are available — I've driven, flown, and once arrived by camel. The destination matters, not the method. NEXT QUESTION → 03 You're pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of. ADisappears into the environment, flanks them silently, and ends it before I've reloaded. BCracks a one-liner, grabs a fire extinguisher or a chair, and improvises something that somehow works. CProduces a gadget specifically designed for this exact scenario and uses it with infuriating precision. DPulls out a whip, a pistol, and an archaeological insight that somehow gets us out alive. ENeutralises the threat with maximum efficiency and minimum words — they were already three moves ahead. NEXT QUESTION → 04 The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are. AA bar with terrible lighting, cold beer, and absolutely no questions about feelings. BThe finest restaurant in the city, a bottle of something expensive, and a conversation that is equal parts brilliant and exhausting. CA local dig site, a museum after hours, or a long story about why that particular artefact matters to human civilisation. DPizza. Bad TV. Falling asleep halfway through a movie neither of you were watching anyway. EA debrief that turns into three hours of contingency planning that somehow becomes the most fun you've had all week. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability. APrecise and minimal — tell me what I need to know and nothing else. Every word has a cost. BDeadpan and dry — keeping it light keeps me sharp, even when everything is on fire. CEnthusiastic and slightly chaotic — but always with useful information buried somewhere in the noise. DCalm and controlled through an earpiece, with a plan that covers every variable I haven't thought of yet. EBarely at all — silence is a language and they speak it fluently. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership. AInfiltrate their inner circle, learn everything, and dismantle them from inside out before they know we're there. BStudy the historical pattern — every villain of this type has a weakness written somewhere in the past. CGet them talking. The more they monologue, the more time I have to figure out how to beat them. DGo through them. Directly. With as much force as the terrain allows. EFind the one thing they haven't accounted for — there's always one thing — and make sure we're holding it. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Things go badly wrong and you're captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters. ACome in alone, quietly, and get me out before anyone knows they were there. BHave already been working on the extraction since the moment I disappeared — the plan is already running. CCome in loud, come in fast, and worry about the collateral damage later — I'd do the same for them. DUse every resource, every contact, and bend every rule until I'm out — they don't leave people behind. ECharm their way in somehow, bluff through the hard part, and still manage to look good doing it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn't replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn't know you had. ATechnology that shouldn't exist yet and the training to use it under any conditions. BSurvival instinct so refined it borders on supernatural — and the scars to prove it's been tested. CKnowledge of history, language, and culture that makes them invaluable in places where force is useless. DThe ability to walk into any room in the world and immediately become the most trusted person in it. EStubbornness that refuses to accept a situation is hopeless — and the improvisational skill to back it up. NEXT QUESTION → 09 Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together. AA partner who never fully switches off — always watching exits, always calculating threats, even at dinner. BA partner who gets the job done brilliantly but has the emotional availability of a locked filing cabinet. CA partner who makes everything ten times more complicated than it needs to be — but who always comes through. DA partner who gets personally attached to every relic, ruin, and artefact we encounter, which slows everything down. EA partner who was not built for this and knows it — but shows up anyway, every time, without being asked. NEXT QUESTION → 10 It's the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one. AOne line. Absolutely dry. Delivered like the world isn't ending. Then we move. BNothing said at all — just a look that means we both already know what has to happen. CA plan I don't fully understand that somehow accounts for everything, delivered in thirty seconds flat. DA piece of historical context that reframes the entire situation and tells us exactly what to do next. ESomeone who steps forward instead of back — because that's who they've always been. REVEAL MY PARTNER → Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse. RamboYour partner doesn't talk much, doesn't need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you've finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You'll never need to ask if he has your back. You'll just know. James BondYour partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it'll take you a moment to remember what's actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You'll never be bored. You'll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing. Indiana JonesYour partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar's eye and a brawler's instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn't matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you'll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them. John McClaneYour partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren't so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay. Ethan HuntYour partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you've finished reading the briefing, and the plan he's settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn't exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 'The Little Drummer Girl' (2018) Image via AMC Park Chan-wook adapted John le Carré's 1983 novel into a six-part miniseries for the BBC and AMC in 2018, and the result is the most visually arresting spy show ever made. Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a British actress recruited by Israeli intelligence to seduce her way into a Palestinian terror cell. Michael Shannon runs the op. Alexander Skarsgård is the honeypot who honeypots her first. And Park shoots the whole thing in candy-colored '70s tableaux, with rotary phones and geometric wallpaper decorating every scene. The Little Drummer Girl is six episodes, no fat, with one of the great Pugh performances in a career already full of them. Ideal for a rainy weekend and a strong opinion about morally compromised heroines. 'Counterpart' (2017–2019) Image via Starz Killed too soon by Starz in 2019, Counterpart is still one of the most complete science-fiction spy shows ever produced. J. K. Simmons plays Howard Silk, a low-level functionary at a mysterious Berlin agency who discovers the office is actually a portal to a parallel Earth. He also discovers his counterpart on the other side is a stone-cold operative who has been living Howard's dream life while our Howard filed paperwork. 20 episodes total, and creator Justin Marks builds a Cold War allegory of extraordinary patience and craft. Simmons is playing two entirely different men and you never once confuse them. It ends on a note that reads as designed rather than cut short, which is generous of it. 'Homeland' (2011–2020) Image via Showtime Homeland ran eight seasons on Showtime, which is a lot, and yes, the fourth and fifth seasons wobble. But just set that aside. In its prime, the show was electric: Claire Danes as bipolar CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody, the Marine POW she is certain was turned by Al-Qaeda. The first season is a small miracle of ambiguity, and the seventh, set inside a QAnon-adjacent American paranoia, feels prophetic in retrospect. Danes gives what is probably the definitive performance of televised mental illness on this side of the millennium. Mandy Patinkin's Saul Berenson is her moral opposite and closest ally. Even the weaker episodes have a scene worth showing your friends. 'The Night Manager' (2016–Present) Image via Prime Video Hugh Laurie playing the most menacing arms dealer imaginable? Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, the former soldier turned hotel night manager who gets recruited to infiltrate his operation? Susanne Bier directing? David Farr adapting? And Elizabeth Debicki floating through scenes, a statuesque vision in French linen? Need we say more about The Night Manager? The show is beautifully made in a way British television rarely bothers with anymore, all Mediterranean light and Egyptian rooftops and Mallorcan villas tinstead of rainy back alleys and dim warehouses. Add in glimpses of the always watchable Olivia Colman, and this is the kind of high-stakes spy watch that somehow feels breezy when you're in it. 'The Agency' (2024–Present) Image via Showtime Showtime's 2024 remake of the French series Le Bureau des Légendes stars Michael Fassbender as a CIA case officer pulled out of deep cover in Ethiopia and asked to resume his London desk job while pretending that the last six years didn't happen. Jeffrey Wright is his boss. Jodie Turner-Smith is the woman he loved undercover, who has now turned up in his real city. Written by the Butterworth Brothers with cold, patient precision, the first season doubles down on the source material's interest in trade craft as a form of emotional dissociation. Fassbender is uniquely suited to playing a man made of compartments. If you missed it during its initial run, catch up on The Agency before more seasons arrive. The Agency Release Date December 1, 2024 Network Paramount+ with Showtime Showrunner Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth Directors Joe Wright, Zetna Fuentes, Neil Burger Main Genre Drama Seasons 2 Producers Simone Goodridge, Amin El Masri, Madis Tüür, Nikolai Mihailishin Executive Producer(s) Alex Berger, Pascal Breton, Ron Burkle, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, George Clooney, Michael Fassbender, David Glasser, Grant Heslov, David Hutkin, Ashley Stern, Joe Wright, Bob Yari, Keith Cox, Nina L. Diaz