Love The Night Agent? Here are the other spy thrillers you NEED to be watching - including one that starts TONIGHT with an incredible twist in its first episode
If you’ve already binged series two of hit Netflix show The Night Agent and want to watch more spy action series, add these high-octane shows – chosen by the Mail’s TV experts – to your watchlist...
Paradise (2025 TV series)
Gripping US thriller about the US President's protection officer
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
The first 'must-see' drama of 2025 is a thriller, and it's also one of those shows you should know as little as possible about before watching, so we'll only give you basics. Sterling K Brown (This Is Us) stars as Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who protects the US President, a smooth-talking son-of-a-gun played by James Marsden - an actor so good-looking he barely needs to be digitally de-aged in the flashbacks.
And that's one other thing we'll tell you about this show - it's full of flashbacks but they're absolutely of the best kind, with each fleshing out both the characters and the story in ways that continually shift your understanding of what's going on.
Julianne Nicholson (Mare Of Easttown) and Sarah Shahi (Sex/Life) also get to play great characters in an eight-parter that has everything from scale to detail, humour to tragedy, all driven by a murder mystery and a gripping, twisting plot that will leave you cursing the fact this isn't a box set release.
While you're waiting for the next episode, though, each instalment will feel a little different the second time you watch. It's that kind of show, too. Expect to see it on a lot of 'best of' lists at the end of the year. (Eight episodes)
Killing Eve
The explosive, career-making spy drama starring Jodie Comer
Year: 2018-2022
Certificate: 15
Jodie Comer plays Russian assassin Villanelle, a woman incapable of empathy or bad fashion choices - even in a pink nylon dress and tough black boots, she's the most striking action woman since Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers in the 60s. On her tail, and curiously attracted to her, is British intelligence agent Eve, played by Sandra Oh, whose shabbiness makes Villanelle look outlandish.
When Killing Eve debuted in 2018, it instantly gripped viewers with its cruel humour, violence, twisty love story and jaw-dropping costumes. The show was a launchpad for Comer, whose star was already on the rise, and for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was the head writer for the first series - the second was run by a certain Emerald Fennell, who was best known then as Nurse Patsy in Call The Midwife but has since gone on to create eye-catching work as a big shot movie director (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn).
The show never quite recaptures the dazzling, renegade spirit it displayed in those early days but it remains a compelling cat-and-mouse thriller throughout, buoyed by a superb supporting cast that includes The Bridge's Kim Bodnia, Steve Pemberton and Harriet Walter. It's also easy to forget, because it was such a TV hit, that the show is actually based on the Villanelle series of books by Luke Jennings. (Four series)
Condor
Max Irons stars in this American CIA thriller series
Year: 2018-2020
Certificate: 15
This US drama is inspired by the thriller Six Days Of The Condor, and sets out an electrifying store in its first two episodes. Max Irons - son of Jeremy - stars as the analyst who is pulled into events way, way beyond his apparent skill set after an algorithm he wrote is used by the CIA. What follows is many things - exciting, sad, funny - but the show rarely relaxes its grip on the viewer.
Joe Turner (Irons) spends a lot of it on the run and Irons joked that, despite all that fleeing, he 'didn't lose much weight' while making the show. During filming, he and everyone else were also all too aware of the shadow cast by the 1975 movie Three Days Of The Condor, and there was a rule on set that you couldn't mention its star Robert Redford's name - anyone who did had to put a $100 bill in a jar. Cast and crew alike were determined to put a different spin on the story and they certainly succeeded in this two-series show, which manages to stand on its own two feet right from the start.
Lastly, back to all that running. Irons felt 'embarrassed' by how he did it: 'I run like an Englishman, all knees and elbows and too upright, which isn't great when you are playing an athletic American!' See how transatlantic you think his posture is when you watch.
The Veil
Elisabeth Moss stars as an MI6 agent in a race against time
Year: 2024
Certificate: 18
'I can change into anything. Become a hundred strangers.' Elisabeth Moss dons a crisp English accent to play MI6 agent Imogen Salter in this glossy and gritty international spy thriller. Salter is a brilliant but unstable asset, a woman who has adopted so many identities that she's not entirely sure who she is any more.
Salter is deployed - presumably without a particularly rigorous psych assessment - to track down the mysterious and dangerous Adilah El Idrissi (Little Birds' Yumna Marwan), who could be preparing an attack on the west. The show is very much about the veil between truth and lies that unfolds between them as they travel between Istanbul, Paris and London, while The Good Wife's Josh Charles knocks back the whisky as a CIA agent who thinks he can control Salter. The fool!
Written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, This Town), the resulting adventure plays a little like a B-movie take on Homeland or Killing Eve, with Moss giving it some great acting punch as the bewitchingly confused Salter. It's not quite as good as watching Claire Danes dig into the tighter script she had on Homeland but then, that's a very high bar to set. (Six episodes)
Treason
MI6's deputy chief is in hot water in this thriller
Year: 2022
Certificate: 15
A five-part British thriller with more twists than a bowl full of spaghetti. Daredevil's Charlie Cox stars as Adam Lawrence, a kind-eyed family man and deputy head of MI6. He's minding his own business when, one day, circumstances conspire to put him in the top job - and a figure from his past shows up with a sinister request.
It's a whirlwind ride from that point on, a show full of scenes in which you're never quite sure who to trust. That's a great place to be as a viewer - right on the edge of your seat - and this sure-handedness should come as no surprise when you learn that Treason comes from Matt Charman, who wrote the Tom Hanks thriller Bridge Of Spies.
As a side note, you may notice a theme of heartbeats in the script, which springs from the show's strong focus on Adam's family life. The technological manifestation of that - the fact his heartbeat is used to access MI6's computers - was, sadly, made up by the writers. But it's a really fun idea, just like this show in general. (Five episodes)
Mr & Mrs Smith (2024 TV series)
A funny, grounded TV take on the spy film
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt met on the set of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, the fun 2005 movie about married undercover secret agents. Amazon's TV series is based on the same premise and, while it doesn't have Pitt and Jolie's megawatt charm in the leads - or the gossip that surrounded them - it is a whole lot of fun and feels much more real.
Donald Glover (Atlanta) and Maya Erskine (Obi-Wan Kenobi) are our John and Jane Smith, put together to work as a married couple by a mysterious agency and taking on assignments they don't understand. They move in glamorous circles for these frequently explosive missions, but John and Jane aren't glamorous themselves - they need the money these jobs provide and aren't quite sure how much to trust each other, which gives the show a real sense of danger. It's also very funny at times (Glover has a long track record in comedy, and is co-creator), and features a great supporting cast including Michaela Coel, John Turturro, Sharon Horgan and the great Parker Posey.
The real draw, though, is the to-and-fro between the Smiths. The meat of their interaction is much more about marriage and partnership than it is about a will-they, won't-they romance, and that's a much deeper and more interesting thing to pick apart over the course of a series. (Eight episodes)
Citadel
High-stakes mayhem in this blockbuster global spy show
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
It can be hard to pin down what an 'Amazon' show is, but a lot of money is usually a key component. You can see that cash on screen in Citadel, a huge bet of a show about a global spy conspiracy that, along with this US 'mothership' series, will also have multiple spin-offs in different countries, including Italy and India.
The show kicks off like a James Bond movie, with the hunky Richard Madden (Bodyguard) and the impossibly glamorous Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Quantico) as agents of a shadowy global organisation known as Citadel, fighting the bad guys on a train whizzing through the Italian Alps. Fast forward eight years, and Madden's character is a family man who can remember nothing of his old life ('I coach Little League'), and a sinister British figure, played with a great sense of fun by Lesley Manville, is setting a dastardly plot in motion.
There's a cleverness and a complexity to what follows later but don't worry too much about the details, here. Sit back and enjoy all the high stakes mayhem that the show's reported $300 million budget has paid for, and the sight of a cast who are clearly more than happy to be along for the ride. There will be a second series and there are various international spin-offs, including Diana (Italy) and Honey Bunny (India). (Six episodes)
The Americans
Gritty 1980s-set undercover espionage drama starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys
Year: 2013-2018
Certificate: 15
Across six enthralling series, The Americans told the story of a pair of top-level KGB agents (The Diplomat's Keri Russell and Perry Mason's Matthew Rhys) as they lived and worked as undercover agents in the America of the early 1980s. It focused on the pair - and their children, neither of whom know their parents' true identities - as they struggled to preserve their sleeper-agent status while trying to gain access to US secrets.
The result was a complex, intelligent and almost unbelievably tense period thriller series that well deserved the critical acclaim heaped upon its writing and performances. Plus there's a nice behind-the-scenes element to keep in mind while watching, as Russell and Rhys became a couple for real while filming the show, and later married and had a child. (Six series)
The Old Man (Series 1)
Jeff Bridges is a deadly ex-CIA man forced back into action
Year: 2022
Certificate: 15
There's no shortage of dramas about men being dragged out of retirement for one last job - Liam Neeson has made a whole second Hollywood career out of it - but this series is one of the finest TV examples. A big part of that is having Jeff Bridges as that (old) man, a deadly ex-CIA operative with one weakness, aside from ageing muscles - his daughter.
When he's pulled out of retirement though, the result isn't just a long sequence of fights that leave him bloodied but unbowed (although there is a lot of that). No, this is a grown-up drama about the choices we make and the consequences they have, with top-tier actors such as John Lithgow (as Bridges' friend turned enemy Harold Harper) and NYPD Blue's Amy Brenneman as a divorcee he meets on the road. (Seven episodes)
