The 12 Best Spy Thriller Shows Streaming Right Now

Spy thrillers are experiencing a streaming renaissance. From literary adaptations of le Carre-style intelligence fiction to high-octane action series, the genre covers everything from slow-burn paranoia to explosive set pieces. Here are the 12 best spy shows you can stream today.

How We Selected: We surveyed options using full-season viewing, critical analysis, and production quality assessment. Key factors included rewatch value, production values, acting performances. No sponsorship or affiliate relationship influenced our selections.

1. Slow Horses (Apple TV Plus) is the definitive spy show of the streaming era. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, a cantankerous MI5 spymaster running Slough House, the department where failed agents are sent to rot. Except the Slough House rejects keep stumbling into real conspiracies. Five seasons of razor-sharp writing adapted from Mick Herron’s novels, with two more seasons confirmed. The show balances dry British humor, genuine menace, and surprising emotional depth. Oldman’s performance is a career highlight.

2. The Americans (Hulu) remains the greatest spy drama ever produced. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell play KGB officers posing as a married American couple in 1980s Washington DC. Six seasons chart their increasingly impossible double life as they raise children who do not know their parents are Soviet agents. The series finale is a masterpiece.

3. Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime Video) puts John Krasinski in the role of Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst who gets pulled from his desk into dangerous field operations. Four seasons of globe-trotting action-thriller with high production values, convincing geopolitical scenarios, and genuinely tense set pieces. Each season tells a self-contained story while advancing Ryan’s career.

4. Andor (Disney Plus) uses the Star Wars universe as a backdrop for one of the most thoughtful spy and resistance dramas in recent memory. Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor joins the nascent Rebel Alliance across two seasons that examine surveillance, propaganda, and the personal costs of political resistance.

5. The Night Agent (Netflix) follows a low-level FBI agent who answers a secret phone line in the White House basement and gets drawn into a conspiracy reaching the highest levels of government. Two seasons of propulsive spy thriller that never stops moving.

6. Lioness (Paramount Plus) is Taylor Sheridan’s CIA drama starring Zoe Saldana as the head of a program that recruits female undercover operatives to infiltrate terrorist organizations. Two seasons of intense, militaristic espionage with high-stakes missions and strong performances.

7. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Amazon Prime Video) reimagines the spy couple premise with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as two strangers hired by a mysterious agency and assigned to pose as a married couple while completing dangerous missions. The show is as much about the relationship as the espionage, finding humor and tension in equal measure.

8. Berlin (Netflix) is the Money Heist spinoff that follows Pedro Alonso’s charismatic thief as he plans a jewel heist in Paris. While technically a heist show, the espionage elements, including surveillance, counter-surveillance, infiltration, and elaborate deception, place it firmly in spy thriller territory.

9. The Diplomat (Netflix) stars Keri Russell as the US Ambassador to the UK who discovers that an international crisis may have been manufactured from within her own government. Two seasons of political espionage where the weapons are conversations, alliances, and leaked intelligence rather than guns and car chases.

10. Citadel (Amazon Prime Video) is an ambitious global spy franchise. The flagship series stars Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as agents of an independent intelligence agency battling a shadowy rival organization. The Italian spinoff Citadel: Diana adds European style to the franchise’s action-espionage formula.

11. The Bureau (Sundance Now / AMC Plus) is the French espionage drama that inspired The Agency. Five seasons follow agents of the DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence service, as they manage deep-cover operatives around the world. Often cited as the most realistic spy show on television, with a methodical pacing that rewards patience.

12. The Day of the Jackal (Peacock) stars Eddie Redmayne as a modern-day professional assassin in a taut adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s classic novel. A British intelligence officer races to identify and stop the Jackal before he completes his contract. The cat-and-mouse tension is superb.

For thriller recommendations beyond espionage, check our thriller series guide. For crime-focused alternatives, see our crime shows roundup.