How TV spy thrillers are booming in an age of distrust

From Netflix’s megahit The Night Agent to Apple TV+’s hit Slow Horses, stories of secret agents and sinister intrigue are making a comeback. Because it resonates with the times.

If you’ve sat down to watch a new TV series lately, the drama involves murder, a sinister plot, a cover-up, molestation, and at least one secret agent trying to get to the bottom of it all. There is a high possibility that there will be.

In recent months, the small screen has seen the renewal of The Day of the Jackal, the 1970s novel about a cat-and-mouse game between an assassin and an MI5 operative, and a fourth series of Apple TV+’s brilliant comedy-drama. agent of the weak, slow horse. These include “The Agency,” an American adaptation of the French thriller “Le Bureau des Légendes,” and “Black Doves,” a sophisticated London-based Netflix show. And last week, the second series of Netflix’s first smash hit, the intrigue-filled The Night Agent, and Apple TV+’s new series Prime Target both premiered, and before the end, Netflix’s The Night Agent premiered. Season 2 of “Recruit” has arrived. This month’s. There are so many spy thrillers on TV right now that you might start to wonder if you’re the only one in the world. do not have Undercover investigator.

Of course, the popularity of spy thrillers on television is nothing new. Spy thrillers have long been a staple for broadcasters and streamers, and much of that is due to the rich spy literature. Spy novels first arose in the early 19th century and reflected the distrust of the political and military conflicts of the time. See James Fenimore Cooper’s 1821 The Spy: A Story of a Neutral Land, which depicts the tension and fear during the American Revolution. The Patriots are British spies.

Going back in time, the genre really began to flourish in the 20th century, when two world wars, the ensuing Cold War, and the establishment of British and American national intelligence agencies provided a rich source of inspiration. During the Cold War, British writers john le carre Len Deighton and Len Deighton were big hitters with such notable works as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Ypress File, and Ian Fleming was one of the biggest names in all future films with his work. Created a blueprint for a Secret Service agent. james bond series. Meanwhile, in the 80s and 90s, American spy novelist Tom Clancy became a global phenomenon with his Jack Ryan series.

More than 200 years after popular spy literature first appeared in print, the appetite for spy thrillers is greater than ever. According to Nielsen Bookdata, the spy novel market in the UK has grown by a staggering 45% in one year, reaching £9.7 million ($12 million) in 2024. Philip Stone, head of publisher account management at Nielsen Bookdata, told the BBC that the crime genre as a whole is booming at the moment, and the reason why sales of spy thrillers in particular are so strong is because of this. “Partly a successful film adaptation of Mick Herron’s ‘Slough House’ series” – The basis of Apple TV+’s Slow Horses.

Considering the high ratings of some spy shows on TV, Season 1 of The Night Agent was watched 98.2 million times, making it the seventh most-watched show in Netflix history. It is also clear that not only readers but also viewers are deeply invested in this work. A double-crossing whistleblower anti-surveillance story. But why is this genre so successful now?

Spy dramas are likely to resonate with viewers as a reflection of the unpredictable and unstable world we currently live in, with all the opaque things happening. A place where the truth is obscured by disinformation and trust in governments, authorities and other institutions is at an all-time low. In the UK, The National Center for Social Research’s quiz response rate was an all-time high of 45% In the 2024 survey He said he had “little faith” in governments of any party to put the needs of the people ahead of their own party’s interests. There is a similar story in the United States. A 2023 Gallup poll revealed that only 8% of the public He said he had “tremendous” confidence in Parliament. 2024 Pew Research Center Survey Only 22% of U.S. adults say they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time or most of the time.

Joseph Oldham, Lecturer in Communication and Mass Media at British University in Egypt and author of the 2017 book Paranoid visions: spies, conspiracies, and secret statestold the BBC that there are parallels between the current spy thriller boom and other periods when the genre particularly flourished, such as the run-up to World War I, before World War II, and the early Cold War. spoke. “What I think these moments in history have in common, and indeed what we have in common now, is that war is on the horizon, or the threat of war is leading to a crisis between the world’s major powers. There’s a sense in the background that great geopolitical tensions are out of control. The apocalypse is always in the background, and tensions turn into proxy wars and espionage.”

People’s suspicions about the people around them are also very high. University of Oxford research It found that 27% of respondents believed there was a conspiracy against them. And conspiracy is a recurring theme in this new show, like The Night Agent. By the way, this is not to be confused with le Carré’s The Night Manager. Almost a decade after the BBC’s 2016 Emmy Award-winning animated adaptation, a second and third series were scheduled for production.

Netflix’s The Night Agent is a paranoia-inducing thriller focused on the White House. To borrow horror movie parlance, the call comes from inside the house. Based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, Season 1 follows low-ranking FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) as he works to uncover who in the presidential palace is behind a “terrorist” bombing on the subway. , he ends up on the run in series two. when the information he gathered on his mission was compromised by a CIA leak. On the other hand, Prime Target – Feature White Lotus”Leo Woodall as mathematician Edward Brooks – A similar plot where Edward comes close to discovering the prime number pattern that holds the key to all the world’s computers, but finds himself being pursued by an unknown and sinister force. I am.

But from a psychological perspective, the reason people are drawn to shows like this is because they cut through the darkness of geopolitics to expose the true villains and ultimately decide who is “good” and “evil.” This is because it ultimately lies in the sense of security provided. “Spy dramas are appealing because they offer escapism and an adrenaline rush, along with the joy of following the protagonist’s journey, but one key element is our strong desire to resolve ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s about how we satisfy our needs, which activates the reward system in our brains.” says. “While the show also appeals to our curiosity about the unknown and the forbidden, it also safely navigates issues of national and global importance in an increasingly complex and polarized world. It also allows us to seek understanding.”

Today’s spy shows sometimes don’t show the fun side of espionage. While secret intelligence thrillers of the 2000s and 2010s like Spooks, Homeland, and 24 took the drama very seriously, modern spy series like killing eveMr. & Mrs. Smith and Black Doves feel very different stylistically and tonally, with a refreshing irreverence, self-deprecating characters, and dark humor not usually seen on this type of television. It’s folded in and feels like it’s aimed at a younger audience.

Additionally, they are notable for their moral ambiguity. So characters like Villanelle (Jodie Comer) in Killing Eve, The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) in The Day of the Jackal, or Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) in Black Doves are hired assassins, but there’s something endearing about them that perversely makes viewers root for them as the line between hero and villain blurs once again.

As for the actual big-name villains, “It’s interesting to note that the villains in these stories have changed to reflect today’s anxieties,” Spray says, noting that before the genre’s rise, ” He pointed out that the cause was “fear of action”. The superpower narrative of the 50s now reflects concerns such as the climate crisis and human trafficking. [and] Of course, our distrust of government is also a rich vein. ”

More specifically, Oldham is interested in how the power to respond to spies has changed in some of these shows. “Traditionally, spy novels have been about agents working for a country or government, whether it’s James Bond or George Smiley. Or they’re being hunted down and persecuted by the government. It was a paranoid conspiracy story, but in a movie like Black, the pigeons all work for this private intelligence agency. [the eponymous Black Doves]and they spend much of the story not knowing who they’re actually serving. These are figures who are cut off from state institutions because much of public life has been privatized, and because government seems increasingly powerless in the face of these capitalist concerns. It seems to be telling the story. ”

This ‘appropriation’ of the spy world in Black Doves is just one of the unique aspects of this stylish original series, written by Joe Barton and starring Wishaw’s Young and Helen Webb (Keira Knightley)’s renegade assassin-spy duo unite against an unknown force. The purpose was to find out who killed Helen’s lover. This is because he realized that even those who employ Helen could be punished in the same way. It has also been a huge hit for Netflix, and unusually a second series was commissioned by the platform before the original was streamed.

These faceless private corporations attempting to control chaos can also be seen in Killing Eve with The Twelve and Mr & Mrs Smith, where they are tasked with and uses a mysterious computer system called HiHi to organize the mission. This murder led some fans to suspect that HiHi was actually an AI. That would certainly be an interesting and very timely conspiracy theory to explore in the second series, which has been given the green light. mark adelstein (One of the Oscar-nominated stars) anora) This time he plays one of the main characters.

After all, given the huge numbers these modern spy stories draw to all distributors, and the sheer volume of novels written and sold in this genre, it’s no surprise that we intend to continue. It doesn’t take a secret agent to reveal that there are so many more stories of deception and covert operations to see on TV.

These shows may only offer far-fetched and fanciful solutions to complex geopolitical problems, but they are still comforting to many. “There’s a nice quote [cultural historian] Michael Denning has said that “secret agents return institutions to a world in which they cease to be the product of human action,” says Oldham.