8 Shows to Watch If You Love Slow Horses
Double crosses. Espionage. Oscar-winning stars. The occasional flourish of noodle-fuelled flatulence. These are just some of the reasons why Slow Horses has managed to stand out from the pack when it comes to ranking the best spy shows of recent years.
Yet, as Season 6 comes to an end in mid-October there are plenty of similarly entertaining series to fill the void until Season 7 comes along.
Created by the British author Will Smith and featuring a masterclass in bad behaviour acting by Gary Oldman, Slow Horses has been a remarkably consistent part of our lives since it first aired in 2022. The current bunch of episodes is the sixth standalone season in less than four and a half years, with number seven and eight already in production — although, with star actor Jack Lowden potentially moving on to other assignments in the not-so-distant future, there’s every chance that these two might be the last.
Either way, TV creators have often found unique ways of approaching episodic spy dramas, and not least in the last 15 years or so — eight of the very best of which can be found in the list below. The following shows aren’t all exactly like Slow Horses, but each one boasts at least a couple of those special ingredients that have made the show such a reliable hit. Read on for more.
If you like watching occasionally hapless professionals attempt to solve potentially world-ending geopolitical scenarios, Patriot could be the show for you.
Originally released on Prime in 2015, this two-season dark comedy espionage thriller follows a melancholy intelligence officer who goes undercover at a Milwaukee piping firm that may or may not be involved in the Iran nuclear program — a job he is thrust into by his father, who is also the U.S. Director of Intelligence.
Come for that engaging setup but stay for the awesome cast, which includes ‘80s icons like Kurtwood Smith (RoboCop) and Debra Winger (Black Widow) as well as Terry O’Quinn from Lost.
Matthew Rhys might be the man of the hour after his unprecedented dual win at the Emmys this year, but real ones know that the Welshman's defining role will always be Philip (or Mischa) Jennings, the undercover KGB officer with a soft spot for his adoptive homeland, who lit up our screens alongside Keri Russell's Elizabeth (Nadezhda) for six seasons of FX’s mighty The Americans.
If you come to Slow Horses for its blend of comedy and drama as well as its occasionally nerve-wrecking undercover shenanigans, The Americans is a must-add for any spy series list.
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The most recent spy show to earn a "certified banger" badge over here at JustWatch is the 2026 Netflix miniseries Legends, which follows the true story of a crack team of customs officials who went undercover in the 1990s to expose some of Britain’s most notorious drug gangs.
Like Slow Horses, the series puts relatively relatable characters into situations where they either seem to be completely overqualified or completely out of their depth — some of which are played for laughs, some for drama, and some for both.
With only six episodes to enjoy, this is one series that doesn’t ask for much in terms of commitment or time; and it also boasts a great cast, including Steve Coogan, Hayley Squires (who will appear again very soon on this list) and the great Tom Burke (of Furiosa fame) in the starring role.
As mentioned above, 2026 has been a great year for Hayley Squires spy shows, with the I, Daniel Blake breakout appearing in both Legends and Season 2 of The Night Manager, alongside Season 1’s returning star Tom Hiddleston and the hunky Babylon actor Diego Calva —who gets to play a deliciously charming villain here and gobbles up every scene he appears in.
For fans of The Night Manager, which originally aired to wide acclaim in 2016, this second season has been a long time coming but it's definitely been worth the wait. If you’ve yet to see either of them, the show's first season follows a hotel manager and former soldier named Jonathan Pryne who’s recruited to go undercover in order expose a British businessman (Hugh Laurie) who is involved in the illegal arms trade.
Don’t go into this one expecting much in terms of comedy, but for nail-biting drama it’s up there with the best of them.
For something that's completely different but still has some of that same Slow Horses DNA, why not give the Prime series The Boys a try?
Granted, this one is set firmly in the world of comic books and superheroes, but if you’re the kind of person who appreciates Jackson Lamb (i.e. good guys who behave very, very badly) you might feel right at home with a character like Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher: a vigilante so hellbent on exposing superhero hypocrisies that he’ll do anything to take them down.
The series — which is based on comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, and which just wrapped up its fifth and final season this year — takes place in a world where superheroes have become a coddled, 1%er, celebrity class with little to no regard for the human beings they’re meant to be saving.
It’s brutally hilarious and hilariously brutal — just be warned, the bone-crunching, fluid-spewing, R-Rated action is not for the faint of heart.
Another quite different looking show that Slow Horses fans should appreciate is the FX animated series Archer, an adult animation classic that ran for 14 years and 14 hilarious seasons between 2009 and 2023.
The show is a shaken and stirred spy satire that bounces through time with about as much regard for the timeline or cultural delicacy as Austin Powers — delivering send-ups of 1940s-era noir, 1960s-era Bond, and 1980s-era Cold War paranoia along the way.
If you’ve just wrapped up Slow Horses Season 6 and are looking for some relatively non-committal spy shenanigans that won’t run out any time soon (145 episodes are at your disposal), this is a very good option.
Is the idea of Sandra Oh as a British intelligence agent enough to sell a series on? I would argue yes, but if you still need convincing just consider that Killing Eve was written by prime-era Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) and co-stars Jodie Comer as a slippery assassin and femme fatale — a woman is both the target of Oh’s agent and also a possible love interest.
Running for four excellent seasons between 2018 and 2022, this show arguably walked (quite briskly) at the BBC so that the Apple TV+ produced Slow Horses could run.
As was finally confirmed in early 2026, the Donald Glover and Maya Erskine spy series Mr. & Mrs. Smith is about to become an anthology show — the second season is currently in production in L.A. with a cast led by Talia Ryder (daughter of Winona) and Mark Eydelshteyn (of Anora fame). If anything, this makes the first season, which aired in 2024, even more of a must-watch, and especially for fans of comedy spy shows.
Inspired by the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie, the first season (much of which was directed by Widow’s Bay regular Hiro Murai) follows a duo of undercover agents who pose as husband and wife. You can probably guess that it starts off a bit rocky for them and that they’ll maybe end up together — such are the rules of screwball comedy, but there's a reason why they've worked for so long.
Alexander Skarsgård, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, John Turturro, and Wagner Moura are just a few of the famous faces you’ll recognise in this show's eye-wateringly good looking cast.
