How TV spy thrillers are booming in an age of mistrust

From the Netflix Mega-Hit The Night Agent to Apple TV+’s beloved Slow Horse, secret agent stories and sinister plots are once again popular. That’s because they resonate with the times.

If you sat down to watch a new TV series recently, there’s a good chance it involves murder, a sinister plot, a cover-up, a mole, and at least one Secret Service agent trying to get to the bottom of it all.

In recent months, on the small screen we’ve had the 1970s novel The Day of the Jackal, a cat-and-mouse game between the Assassin and the Mi5 Operative, and a series 4 update on Apple TV+’s brilliant comedy-drama. Agent of the underdog, slow horse. agency, the American adaptation of the French thriller Le Bureau des Regendes, and the slick London-based Netflix show Black Doves. And last week saw the premiere of the second series of the intrigue Raising the Night Agent. This was a huge hit on Netflix for the first time. This month’s. There are so many spy thrillers on TV at the moment that you might start to wonder if you’re the only person in the world who isn’t a secret agent.

Of course, the popularity of spy thrillers on television is nothing new. They’ve long been a staple for broadcasters and streamers, and a lot of that is down to their wealth of spy literature. Spy novels first appeared in the early 19th century and reflected the distrust surrounding the political and military conflicts of the time. Patriot is a British spy.

The genre really began to flourish in the 20th century, following two world wars, following the Cold War, and following the creation of British and American national intelligence agencies. During the Cold War, British authors such as John le Carré and Len Deighton were big hitters with famous works such as The Tinker Tailor Soldier and The Ipcles File. series. Meanwhile, come the 80s and 90s, American spy novelist Tom Clancy became a worldwide phenomenon with his Jack Ryan series.

Now, more than 200 years after the popular spy-based literature was first printed, the appetite for spy thrillers is stronger than ever. In the UK, the spy novel market grew by 45% ($12 million) annually in 2024, according to Nielsen Bookdata. Philip Stone, head of publisher account management at Nielsen Bookdata, tells the BBC that it’s booming for the crime genre as a whole. Successful adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House series – the basis of Apple TV+’s Slow Horse.

Considering some of the big ratings for spy shows on TV, season 1 of The Night Agent was Netflix’s 7th most-watched show with 98.2 million views, making it a favorite among readers as well as viewers. is also clear. A tale of double-turning, whistleblowing counter-surveillance. But why is this genre particularly successful right now?

With all the ambiguous dynamics going on, the spy drama is likely to resonate with viewers because it reflects the unpredictable and volatile world we currently live in. Disinformation is obscuring the truth, and it is unclear at a time when trust in governments, authorities, and other institutions is at an all-time low. In the UK, a record high of 45% of people quizzed by the National Center for Social Research in a 2024 survey showed they had “little confidence” in a government whose needs for the nation go beyond the interests of their own party. I won’t.” In the United States, it’s a similar story, with a 2023 Gallup poll finding that only 8% of people had “a fair amount” of confidence in Congress, but a 2024 Pew poll In the Center’s survey, only 22% of U.S. adults said they trust. The federal government always or most of the time does the right thing.

Joseph Oldham, Lecturer in Communication and Mass Media at the British University in Egypt, author of 2017’s Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracy and the State of Secrets, presented to the BBC between the current spy thriller boom and other eras. Tell them that there are similarities. It is particularly flourishing, with World War I, pre-World War II, and early Cold War appearances. “What I think these moments in history have in common with each other, and indeed our current moment, is a major global crisis where war is looming or looming or under threat. There’s a background sense of great geopolitical tensions between the powers that be. Apocalypse is always hanging in the background, tensions taking refuge in proxy wars and espionage.”

The level of people’s suspicion of those around them is also high. An Oxford University survey found that 27% of respondents believed there was a conspiracy against them. The Night Agent – not to be confused with LeCurré’s The Night Manager, coincidentally heading into its second and third series almost a decade after its 2016 Emmy Award-winning BBC adaptation.

Netflix’s The Night Agent, to borrow from horror movie properties, is a paranoid thriller that focuses on the White House, where calls are coming from inside the house. Adapted from the novel by Matthew Quirk, the season follows low-ranking FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) working to expose who in the president’s office is behind Metro’s staged “terrorist” bomb. ) I saw it. When the information he gathered from the mission was compromised due to a CIA leak. Meanwhile, Prime Target – featuring White Lotus’ Leo Woodall as mathematician Edward Brooks – features a similar plot. .

But from a psychological point of view, people are drawn to such shows for the sense of security they are finally being offered, able to cut through the geopolitical mud and bring out the real villains, and ultimately can reveal who is “good” and “bad”. “Spy dramas are appealing for the escapism and adrenaline rush they provide, for the joy of following the hero’s journey, but one key element is the strong desire to resolve ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s about how you meet your needs, says Dr Justin Spray, a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society and a filmmaker. “The show also appeals to our curiosity about the unknown and the forbidden, but in an increasingly complex and polarized world, issues of national and global importance safely navigate and understand.

Today’s spy shows don’t mean you can’t find the funny side of espionage from time to time. On the other hand, 00S, ’00S’ 10S Secret Services thrillers, Spooks, Homeland and 24 played drama very seriously, while modern spy series such as Killing Eve, Mr&&Mrs Smith and Black Doves are stylistically and emphatically felt very different and had a fresh fold of irreverence. Self-deprecating characters and black humor that you don’t usually see on this type of television, and that I feel is aimed at a younger audience.

Additionally, they were notable for their moral ambiguity. So characters such as Eve’s Villanelle (Jodie Comer), The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne), or The Black Pigeon’s Sam Young (Ben Whishaw), assassins are hired to kill Villanelle (Jodie Comer). There they are. Something fascinating that even warps viewers rooting for them, as the line between hero/villain gets blurred once again.

When it comes to real-life, big-time villains, Spray says, “It’s interesting to note that the villains in these stories have changed to reflect today’s concerns.” Out of 50s superpowers, the plot now reflects concerns such as the climate crisis and human trafficking. A rich vein, of course, is distrust in our government. ”

More specifically, Oldham is interested in how the power that spies answer to has changed in some of these shows. “Traditionally, spy fiction has usually been about agents working for the state or government, whether it’s James Bond or George Smiley. It’s a story of intrigue. Our main characters are all , who work for this private intelligence service (the black dove of the same name) and spend many stories where they don’t actually know who they are serving. To talk about the feeling of seeming increasingly ineffective in the face of these capitalist concerns.”

This “privatization” of Black Doves’ spy world was just one of the unique aspects of this stylish original series written by Joe Barton. In order to find out who killed Helen’s lover, they realized that they could be equally divided, even by the people who employ them. Another big Netflix hit, it unusually had a second series commissioned by the platform before the original was available for streaming.

These faceless private companies trying to control the chaos order assassinations from Eve, a mysterious 12-year-old called Hihi who organizes missions in killing anonymous people, or Mr. It can also be viewed on computer systems. The killings led some fans to wonder if the baboons were actually AI. It’s certainly an interesting and very timely conspiracy theory to explore in the second series, which has been given the green light, with Mark Eidelstein (one of the stars of Oscar Chip Anora) playing the lead this time around. I’m playing one.

Given the sheer number of these modern spy language stories being pulled into every streamer, and the sheer number of novels being written and sold in this genre, it’s all said and done. See more stories of deception and covert operations on TV.

And while these shows may offer only extraordinary flights of fantasy solutions for complex geopolitical issues, they are still a comfort to many. “There’s a nice quote from[cultural historian]Michael Denning, who says, “The secret agent restores agency to a world that seems less and less the product of human action.” ” says Oldham.