Shows Like
Shows Like Slow Horses: Spy Dramas That Earn It
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 6 min read
Slow Horses works because it refuses the two things spy TV usually sells you. Nobody is competent and nobody is glamorous. Jackson Lamb runs a department full of MI5 failures out of a building that smells, and the tension comes from watching people with no leverage get used by people with all of it. Five seasons have aired on Apple TV+ since April 2022, adapted from Mick Herron's Slough House novels, and a sixth starts September 16, 2026.
So the useful question isn't "what other spy show is good." It's which part of Slow Horses you're actually chasing: the office comedy, the tradecraft, the le Carre-shaped moral rot, or the plotting. This list is sorted that way, and each entry says what it trades away. Checked September 9, 2026.
If you want the tradecraft taken seriously
Le Bureau des Legendes (Canal+, France, 2015 to 2020, five seasons, fifty episodes) is the one to watch first, and it is a French production rather than the co-production it sometimes gets called. Mathieu Kassovitz plays an undercover officer back from six years in Damascus who cannot let go of the identity he built there. Eric Rochant created it with input from former DGSE officers, and it shows: the procedure is granular, the wins are small, and a season can turn on one badly handled meeting. It shares Slow Horses's belief that the agency is the real antagonist. What it gives up is the jokes. There are almost none. Subtitled, and worth it.
The Americans (FX, 2013 to 2018, six seasons, seventy five episodes) puts two KGB illegals in a Virginia suburb in the early 1980s with two American kids who have no idea. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are extraordinary, and the show gets progressively less interested in the missions and more interested in the marriage. Where Slow Horses uses failure for comedy, this uses it for dread. The final season is one of the best closing runs any American drama has managed. Choose it if you want spycraft that costs somebody something.
Spooks (BBC One, 2002 to 2011, ten seasons, eighty six episodes), aired in the US as MI-5, is the direct institutional ancestor. Same service, same grubby offices, and a notorious willingness to kill off leads with no warning. It's older and more procedural than Slow Horses, and the early seasons look their age, but the office-politics-with-lives-at-stake register is identical. Ten seasons is a commitment, so treat it as a well rather than a binge.
If you want the le Carre register
The Night Manager (BBC One, 2016, six episodes) stars Tom Hiddleston as a hotel manager recruited to get close to an arms dealer, with Hugh Laurie as the dealer, Olivia Colman as his handler, and Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki alongside. Susanne Bier directed all six. It's the glossiest thing here, all Mallorca and Cairo and good tailoring, which is the opposite of Slough House, but the central idea about who the service is willing to spend is pure le Carre. A second season arrived on Prime Video starting January 11, 2026, ten years after the first.
The Little Drummer Girl (BBC One, 2018, six episodes) is Park Chan-wook directing le Carre, with Florence Pugh as an English actress recruited by Israeli intelligence to play a role inside a Palestinian cell, opposite Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Shannon. It is the most visually composed spy series of the last decade and the slowest. Pick it if you liked how Slow Horses treats recruitment as a form of coercion. Skip it if you need pace.
Berlin Station (Epix, later MGM+, 2016 to 2019, three seasons) follows a CIA station hunting an internal leak, and it's the closest anyone has come to the Slough House atmosphere in an American production: bad coffee, worse management, everybody suspecting the desk next to them. Richard Armitage leads. It's uneven, and the third season is a noticeable drop, but the first is a genuinely good paranoid office thriller.
If you want the real-story version
The Spy (Netflix, 2019, six episodes) casts Sacha Baron Cohen against type as Eli Cohen, the Mossad agent who spent years embedded in Damascus in the 1960s. It's a limited series with a known ending, so the tension is in the accumulation of small risks rather than in whether he gets caught. Baron Cohen plays it entirely straight and it works. The shortest commitment on this page.
SAS Rogue Heroes (BBC, 2022 to present, two seasons) is Steven Knight dramatising the founding of the SAS in North Africa, scored with rock music and played with a swagger that has nothing to do with realism. It shares Slow Horses's affection for insubordinate men who are right, and it is much louder about it. Go here when you want the fun rather than the ache.
Deutschland 83 (2015, with Deutschland 86 and 89 following through 2020, three seasons, twenty six episodes) sends an East German border guard undercover into the West German army in 1983. It's funnier than the premise suggests, and the fish-out-of-water comedy in the first season is the closest tonal cousin to Slow Horses on this list. Each season jumps forward a few years and changes setting, which keeps it from going stale. Subtitled.
If you're really here for the character work
Killing Eve (BBC America and AMC, 2018 to 2022, four seasons, thirty two episodes) started with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as lead writer and treats intelligence work as an obsession between two women rather than as a job. The first two seasons are terrific and the last two are widely considered a slide, which is worth knowing before you start. It has the workplace absurdity Slow Horses runs on, with a much sharper wardrobe budget.
Tehran (Kan 11 in Israel, then Apple TV+, 2020 to present, three seasons) follows a Mossad hacker stuck in the city her family left, and the best sequences are about staying still and not being noticed. It's the most nerve-shredding thing on this list minute for minute. Niv Sultan carries it, and Glenn Close joins from the second season. Subtitled in Farsi and Hebrew.
How to choose tonight
If you want the closest match to what Slow Horses actually does, Le Bureau des Legendes. If you want to feel something, The Americans. If you want six episodes and out, The Spy. If you want the jokes back, Deutschland 83 or SAS Rogue Heroes. Where each of these streams changes; the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
If you'd rather hand the problem over, our TV recommendation tool takes a few shows you already rate and comes back with picks, a reason for each, and where they stream.
Topics covered: spy-thriller, drama, espionage, political, british, apple-tv
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.