10 Greatest Secret Agent Shows, Ranked

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Eddie Redmayne staring down the scope of a sniper rifle in Day of the Jackal.

I’ve always gravitated toward secret agent shows because they take place in a world where nothing is ever certain. Espionage stories have this timeless appeal because they rely on feelings of paranoia and compromise that are woven into the very fabric of the human condition. A great spy film can be thrilling, but television is the medium where the genre truly comes alive.

Long-form storytelling perfectly captures the slow, tormenting process of living under fake identities and the consequences that follow long after a mission ends. Now, it’s obviously hard to keep track of the countless shows that revolve around spies, intelligence agencies, and covert missions. However, here are 10 of the best secret agent shows that truly understand the stakes of espionage.

10 ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ (2024-)

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine sitting on a park bench and laughing in Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a reimagining of the 2005 film of the same name, but it quickly establishes that it’s not replicating the same story all over again. Instead of following a married couple of rival assassins like the original, the show centers on two strangers who are paired together by a mysterious organization and forced to live undercover as husband and wife. The two are given the aliases John (Glover) and Jane (Sloane) Smith, and their missions change every week with instructions that arrive anonymously via text. From the very beginning, the series uses the spy framework to explore themes of intimacy, connection, and compatibility in a way that has never been done before.

As John and Jane’s assignments grow more complex, so do their feelings toward each other. Aside from that, the show also features typical espionage moments, including John and Jane surveilling the Italian Dolomites Forces and infiltrating an auction to gather information. However, the stakes truly rise when this mysterious organization starts manipulating the couple and ultimately orders them to eliminate one another. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a true relationship drama wrapped inside a spy thriller, and that makes it worth watching.

9 ‘The Night Manager’ (2016-)

Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine staring ahead into the distance while outdoors in The Night Manager.

The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name, doesn’t rely on flashy explosions and nonstop action. Instead, the show leans into the patience, psychology, and moral consequences of espionage. The show follows Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier working as the night manager of a luxury hotel in Cairo during the Arab Spring. Things take a turn when he becomes romantically involved with a woman connected to an illegal arms deal. Pine is then approached by intelligence officer Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman) to infiltrate the inner circle of wealthy arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) and take him down.

The Night Manager is a delicious spy thriller that constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat. The show uses uncertainty as its biggest storytelling tool. Every move that Pine makes bears the risk of exposing him, and that is what drives the story forward. None of this tension would have been effective, though, if it weren’t for Hiddleston’s restrained and intense performance. The show unfolds like a chess match where power shifts are subtle but violent. The Night Manager never rushes its story, and that’s its greatest strength.

8 ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ (1979)

Terence Rigby standing next to Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) mini series

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is one of the most intellectually demanding and emotionally restrained spy shows ever made. The series is adapted from Le Carré’s 1974 novel of the same name and strips espionage to its rawest and most brutal form. The story follows Alec Guinness as George Smiley, a senior officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service who has been forced into early retirement after an operation goes catastrophically wrong. However, he is pulled back into the game when new information suggests that a Soviet mole may have infiltrated British Intelligence. The seven-part miniseries is deliberate in its pace and gives neither its characters nor the audience any time to rest.

The narrative unfolds through fragmented flashbacks, and you engage with the mystery through Smiley’s eyes. The tension comes from the protagonist’s constant fear of making one wrong move that could alert the mole and ruin the entire operation. The show thrives thanks to its commitment to realism, where information is revealed slowly, and the audience has to engage with the story on an intellectual level. In many ways, it mirrors how intelligence gathering actually works, with absolute certainty being almost always out of reach.

7 ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (2024)

Eddie Redmayne in The Day of the Jackal Season 1

The Day of the Jackal is one of the most gripping spy thrillers of recent times. The series is a contemporary reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel, but unlike previous adaptations, this version is far more interested in the process than the spectacle of it all. The show follows Eddie Redmayne as a skilled sniper and professional killer, Alexander Duggan, better known as the Jackal. He is pursued across Europe by MI6 firearms expert Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch), who is tasked with stopping him before a politically explosive assassination reshapes global power structures.

The stakes are as high as they get, and the show’s brilliance lies in its exploration of how assassinations are meticulously planned down to every small detail. Redmayne delivers a chilling performance as he plays a man constantly switching languages and identities with horrifying ease. The way he can detach from his own sense of self to deliver whatever the moment demands. The Jackal is never presented as a hero, but he is the show’s most fascinating character. Bianca’s pursuit of him brings in a more procedural structure to the show, and while Lynch’s performance falters sometimes, Redmayne is the star of the show in every right.

6 ‘The Sandbaggers’ (1978-1980)

Very few shows have come close to the legacy of The Sandbaggers. The series never compromises on realism and shows the corporate side of intelligence work. The story follows Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden), Director of Operations at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, who oversees a small, elite unit known as the Sandbaggers. These operatives are deployed only when missions are too sensitive and politically dangerous for conventional channels. Burnside’s closest ally is Willie Caine (Ray Lonnen), one of the few people he genuinely trusts. Together, they navigate high-risk operations involving defections, covert extractions, assassinations, and international crises, all while fighting constant interference from politicians, rival agencies, and their own superiors.

The show is rarely about whether a mission succeeds or fails. Instead, it looks at what happens when operations are approved late, underfunded, or sabotaged for diplomatic convenience. The agents are treated as expendable, and in the midst of all of this, Burnside has to force between doing what is right and what is possible. Each episode is dense and packed with conversation-driven drama that might feel slow at first, but the more you watch, the more you’re sucked into this fascinating world. The Sandbaggers isn’t the kind of show where the good guys always win, but that’s exactly what makes it so hard-hitting.

5 ‘Mission: Impossible’ (1966-1973)

The team in Mission Impossible series (1966)

The original Mission: Impossible is still one of the most influential secret agent shows ever made. In fact, it remains the blueprint for the genre to this day. The show, created by Bruce Geller, gave the audience a version of espionage that felt more like a carefully choreographed con, where brains mattered way more than brute force. The series follows the Missions Force (IMF), a covert team of specialists tasked with dismantling dictators, crime syndicates, corrupt officials, and shadow governments operating beyond the reach of conventional law enforcement.

Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) initially leads the team before Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) takes over for the bulk of the show’s run. Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, and Peter Lupus make up the central cast. Each mission the IMF embarks on is tailored to the characters’ specific skill sets, and this strong focus on teamwork is the show’s foundation. Mission: Impossible doesn’t really focus on the characters’ backstories, but it’s a deliberate move to treat them as professionals first. The agents take on new personas in every episode, and this restraint contributes to the show’s immersive quality. Decades later, Mission: Impossible still feels modern in its storytelling and stands as a reminder of what the franchise was before it turned into a spectacle of dramatic stunts and high-stakes confrontations.

4 ‘Homeland’ (2011-2020)

Carrie Mathison looking to the distance in Homeland

Homeland practically redefined what espionage television could look like in the post-9/11 era. The series, developed by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, is based on the Israeli series Prisoners of War, and follows Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a brilliant but unstable CIA case officer who becomes convinced that Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a U.S. Marine rescued after eight years in captivity, has been manipulated by al-Qaeda and now poses a threat to the United States. The show gradually expands its scope from there and revolves around the cat-and-mouse dynamic between Carrie and Brody. In its later seasons, Homeland shifts away from a single suspected terrorist toward a broader examination of modern intelligence work, drone warfare, foreign interference, and more.

Carrie’s long-running relationship with her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) gives the story its emotional grounding as the settings move from Langley to Beirut, Kabul, Berlin, Washington, and more. Homeland’s brilliance lies in its complex portrayal of Carrie. She is by no means the perfect hero, and her bipolar disorder only contributes to some of her extreme personal and professional decisions. However, this is what heightens the show’s tension and forces the audience to constantly question her instincts. Unlike many other secret agent shows, Homeland plays the long game, and the consequences of Carrie’s actions linger for entire seasons. The show does lose some of its momentum in its later seasons, but delivers a fitting ending that stays true to its core themes.

3 ‘The Bureau’ (2015-2020)

Malotru (Mathieu Kassovitz) outdoors looking to the side with a bag strap over his shoulder in The Bureau.

The Bureau is hands down one of the most authentic secret agent series ever produced. The show, created by Éric Rochant, inspired by real accounts from former intelligence officers and focuses on the inner workings of the DGSE, France’s external security service. The story initially follows Guillaume Debailly (Mathieu Kassovitz), an undercover agent returning to Paris after six years of being undercover in Damascus. However, his routine reintegration quickly turns dangerous when Guillaume refuses to fully abandon his fake identity and secretly resumes contact with Nadia El Mansour (Zineb Triki), a woman he fell in love with during his time in Damascus.

This emotional attachment puts both of them at risk and leads to a chain reaction inside the Bureau where personal feelings are a serious operational threat. We also follow Marina Loiseau (Sara Giraudeau), a young analyst preparing to go undercover for the first time, and her storyline stands as a stark contrast to Guillaume’s. The show portrays espionage as gruelling, time-consuming work that isolates the agents from the rest of the world. By doing so, it explores the ethical cost of secrecy and delivers one of the most honest stories the genre has ever seen.

2 ‘The Americans’ (2013-2018)

Keri Russell as Elizabeth and Holly Taylor as Paige in The Americans

The Americans is one of the most factually accurate secret agent shows you can watch, largely because it was created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg. The series doesn’t glamorize espionage and treats intelligence work as a slow process that seeps into every aspect of a person’s life. The story takes place during the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, which grounds the stakes in real historical tension. We follow Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), two KGB officers posing as a married American couple in suburban Washington, D.C. On the surface, they appear to be ordinary parents raising their children, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), and running a small travel agency.

In reality, though, Elizabeth and Phillip are Soviet agents carrying out covert missions. However, their carefully constructed life is at risk when they become friends with their next-door neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI counterintelligence agent whose job is to hunt spies just like them. What I love about the show is that it’s less about individual missions and more about the toll a lie as big as this can take on people. Phillip and Elizabeth’s relationship is strained, and they start to wonder if the violence they commit is justified, especially when their work begins to affect their children. The Americans explores a grey area where it neither glorifies nor vilifies the Soviet Agents. Instead, it aims to show that all of these characters are operating inside flawed systems.

1 ‘Slow Horses’ (2022-)

Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in a hat and glasses looking to the side in Slow Horses.

Slow Horses is one of the sharpest and most self-aware espionage series of the last decade, not because it reinvents the spy genre, but because it strips it of illusion. The Apple TV+ series is based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and explores the intelligence world from its bottom tier. The story revolves around Slough House, MI5’s administrative purgatory, a dumping ground for agents who have failed too publicly to be trusted but not disastrously enough to be fired. The idea is to let them slowly fade away through boredom and humiliation.

However, the plan collapses when Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) enters the picture and takes it upon himself to lead the agency’s rejects. Each season follows a new intelligence crisis that these so-called slow horses stumble upon and tackle in a desperate attempt to redeem themselves. The ensemble cast features Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves, Christopher Chung, and more, all of whom bring a different kind of failure to the table. The show stands out because of its tone, which uses comedy to point out how cruel and bureaucratic intelligence work really is. Slow Horses is a character-driven thriller that gets better with each episode and never fails to maintain its sense of urgency.