Best tv shows like A Spy Among Friends
Last updated March 2024
Looking for tv shows similar to A Spy Among Friends? Contribute your expertise to guide others to tv series and movies you've watched previously that might interest them as well. Facilitate widening the network of individuals introducing videos to each other. We value your involvement!
Plot Summary:
Follow the defection of notorious British intelligence officer and KGB double agent, Kim Philby, through the lens of his complex relationship with MI6 colleague and close friend, Nicholas Elliott.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 55 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like A Spy Among Friends (2022):
Similar in 82%
Philby, Burgess and Maclean (1977)
Plot Summary:
Recruited by the Russians during their days at Cambridge, three young Englishmen rise to become high-ranked MI5 agents until their exposure in 1949.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 71
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: microfilm
Similar in 81%
Master Spy (1963)
Plot Summary:
Boris Turganev (Murray) is a Russian scientist who has absconded from a Communist prison in an attempt to achieve a better life working for the British. As Boris struggles to make his superiors believe he is there to work and not to spy for the Russians, an office romance blossoms that could put his mission in jeopardy.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 184
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: independent film, eurospy
Similar in 90%
The Dirty Game (1965)
Plot Summary:
A U.S. intelligence general (Robert Ryan) recalls three Cold War cases of Soviet (Henry Fonda), French and Italian (Vittorio Gassman) spies.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 267
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: France, Italy, West Germany, USA
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: anthology, retro, independent film, eurospy, microfilm
Similar in 90%
Secret Weapons (1985)
Plot Summary:
Hamilton plays a young Russian girl recruited to be a sex spy, seducing men and catching them in compromising situations so they can be blackmailed. The problems start when she falls in love with one of her targets, and must figure out how to avoid the constant surveillance and defect.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 291
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Spy/Master (2023)
Plot Summary:
During the height of the Cold War, Victor Godeanu, the right-hand man and closest advisor to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and secret agent for the KGB, must escape Romania and Ceaușescu before his cover is blown. Helped by an undercover Stasi agent and an up-and-coming CIA agent, Godeanu must elude the KGB and his own country’s spooks, fully aware that his defection is putting his family back home in mortal danger.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: Romania
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: period drama
Similar in 77%
The Clearing (2023)
Plot Summary:
A woman is forced to confront the nightmares of her past in order to stop a secret cult intent on gathering children to fulfil its master plan.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Australia
Duration: 391 min
Plot tags: psychological, psychological thriller, dark
Similar in 80%
The Same Sky (2017)
Plot Summary:
Lars is a "Romeo agent" from East Germany in the 1970s. His task is to go West, first to seduce and then to spy on Western women who worked in government or defense institutions.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, captivating, suspenseful, political
Similar in 82%
Shadow Lines (2019)
Plot Summary:
During the 1950s, Helsinki was the focal point of the Cold War, as global powers and their intelligence agencies coalesced in the small neutral country that stood between the East and the West. Shadow Lines is an international spy thriller that follows a secret intelligence team whose mission is to defend the independence of Finland no matter the cost.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 687
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Finland
Duration: 43 min
Plot tags: political, tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, political thriller, historical drama
Similar in 86%
Spy City (2020)
Plot Summary:
After a defector is murdered, British agent Fielding Scott is assigned to track down a mole in his own ranks in 1961 Berlin. His investigation leads him into a deadly web of crime, betrayal and paranoia. Who can Scott trust in the city of spies?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany, USA
Duration: 48 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, thrilling
Similar in 79%
Slow Horses (2022)
Plot Summary:
This quick-witted spy drama follows a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents—and their obnoxious boss, the notorious Jackson Lamb—as they navigate the espionage world’s smoke and mirrors to defend England from sinister forces.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 52000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration:
Plot tags: captivating, tense, disturbing, funny, crime thriller, thrilling
Similar in 88%
The Sell Out (1976)
Plot Summary:
This action drama centers on a former CIA operative who grudgingly rejoins the spy game due to the machinations of his one-time student - a screw up who goes to work for the Soviets. As his job drags him deeper into a dangerous and under-handed world, the student wants out of the agency and oout of the U.S.S.R. But the man's choices have made him a target and now both the United States and Russia want him dead, sending their mos able hit men to do it.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 619
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, Italy, Israel
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: suspense, poliziottesco
Similar in 87%
Some May Live (1967)
Plot Summary:
During the Vietnam War U.S. decoder Kate Meredith is plagued with guilt when her correspondent husband coerces her to pass information to him and the Viet Cong.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 71
Genere: Drama, Thriller, War
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychotronic, cult film
Similar in 89%
The Little Drummer Girl (2018)
Plot Summary:
Brilliant young actress Charlie strikes up an acquaintance with an intriguing stranger while on holiday in Greece, but it rapidly becomes apparent that his intentions are far from romantic.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 342 min
Plot tags: tense, atmospheric, captivating, suspense, stylized, anthology, detective, anime
Similar in 90%
Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within (1998)
Plot Summary:
Fact-based story about a 90's espionage case that was chronicled as the worst case of espionage in US history.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 360
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 81%
Family of Spies (1990)
Plot Summary:
Fact based story of John A. Walker, Jr., a Navy Chief Warrant Officer with access to top secret cryptographic communications. As a result of mounting debts, he sold secrets to the Soviets in 1967, a practice that he continued thereafter. He further sought to involve his four children into the espionage until his wife caught onto his activities.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 298
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 175 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 81%
Allegiance (2015)
Plot Summary:
Alex O'Connor, a young idealistic CIA analyst specializing in Russian affairs, learns a shocking secret and his close-knit, affluent family is about to be split apart when it's revealed that his parents, Mark and Katya, are covert Russian spies deactivated decades ago. But today the Kremlin has re-enlisted them into service as they plan a terrorist operation inside the U.S. border that will bring America to its knees.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 42 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, suspense, interesting
Similar in 89%
Deutschland 83 (2015)
Plot Summary:
A gripping coming-of-age story set against the real culture wars and political events of Germany in the 1980s. The drama follows Martin Rauch as the 24 year-old East Germany native is pulled from the world as he knows it and sent to the West as an undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service. Hiding in plain sight in the West German army, he must gather the secrets of NATO military strategy. Everything is new, nothing is quite what it seems and everyone he encounters is harboring secrets, both political and personal.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: Germany
Duration: 42 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, suspense, exciting, captivating, epic, political, action adventure
Similar in 81%
Totems (2021)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1965 in the midst of the Cold War, Totems follows a French scientist, Francis Mareuil, as he begins working as a spy. While working for the French Secret Service and the CIA, Mareuil meets Lyudmila Goloubeva, a pianist forced to work for the KGB. A romance blossoms between them but neither can be sure what is an expression of their true feelings, and what is the fruit of political shenanigans….
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 882
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 52 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, period drama
Similar in 82%
A Perfect Spy (1987)
Plot Summary:
This is the story of Magnus Pym, from his childhood to the end of his career in middle age. As a young man, there is little doubt that his father Rick was the most influential character in his life. Rick was a raconteur, con man, thief, black marketer and all in all, simply larger than life. From a young age, Rick included Magnus in his schemes and the young man learned that you would do anything for the ones you love. When a university student in Switzerland, Pym meets the other person who will have the greatest influence in his life, Axel, a Czech refugee. As Pym enters his career in the British Secret Service, his relationship with Axel and the values he developed in childhood lead him down his own path of betrayal and loyalty.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 982
Genere: Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 374 min
Plot tags: political, psychological, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 85%
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
Plot Summary:
Two British agents are murdered by a mysterious Neonazi organization in West Berlin. The British Secret Service sends agent Quiller to investigate. Soon Quiller is confronted with Neonazi chief "Oktober" and involved in a dangerous game where each side tries to find out the enemy's headquarters at any price.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: neo noir, political thriller, independent film, exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized, eurospy
Similar in 90%
Legacy (2013)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1970s London during the height of the Cold War when a young spy discovers the disturbing truth about his father's complex past. Based on Alan Judd's 2001 novel Legacy, the second in the Thoroughgood series after 1981's A Breed Of Heroes (adapted by the BBC in 1994). As the three day week, petrol rationing and industrial strife plunge Britain into a state of emergency, MI6 trainee spy Charles Thoroughgood is asked to reconnect with an old university friend, Russian diplomat Viktor Koslov, with a view to 'turning' him. Viktor has his own agenda, though, and reveals a shocking truth about Charles's own family that threatens to derail him, both personally and professionally. He is catapulted into a dangerous personal odyssey to uncover the truth but finds himself drawn into a lethal KGB plot to mount an attack within the UK. His life is further complicated by a relationship with the wife of another agent, which forces him to realise that betrayal can take many forms.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 461
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, tense, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
The Assets (2014)
Plot Summary:
1985 serves as the backdrop to the final showdown of the Cold War when Sandy and her partner Jeanne Vertefeuille vowed to find the mole that would turn out to be the most notorious traitor in US History, Aldrich Ames. Sandy is in a race against time to save the Soviet intelligence officers from being caught and killed. Living her own double life at home, this beautiful wife and mother vowed to stop at nothing until she uncovered the truth.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: serious, suspenseful, tense, realistic, political
Similar in 89%
Smiley's People (1982)
Plot Summary:
Called out of retirement to settle the affairs of a friend, Smiley finds his old organization, the Circus, so overwhelmed by political considerations that it doesn't want to know what happened. He begins to follow up the clues of his friends past days, discovering that the clues lead to a high person in the Russian Secret service, and a secret important enough to kill for. Smiley continues to put together the pieces a step ahead or a step behind the Russian killers.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Mystery
Country: UK
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, psychological, tense, road movie, atmospheric, sexy, thought provoking, clever
Similar in 76%
Enigma (1982)
Plot Summary:
Five highly-trained KGB agents are sent to the west to assassinate several Soviet dissidents. In order to stop the diabolical plot, an American agent must infiltrate Soviet intelligence and obtain information from a Russian computer.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, France
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, intense, serious, realistic, political, political thriller, independent film, exciting, romantic, atmospheric
Similar in 77%
The Game (2014)
Plot Summary:
London 1972. When a defecting KGB officer, Arkady Malinov, reveals Operation Glass, a devastating Soviet plot that could change the course of the Cold War, Daddy, the head of MI5, assembles a secret team to investigate. As the Soviets awaken a list of sleeper agents all over Britain, Daddy's team must move swiftly to gain information about the plot.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 59 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, suspenseful, tense, clever, serious, captivating, realistic, stylized, period drama
Similar in 79%
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Plot Summary:
British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the cold war during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: political, black and white, suspense, grim, clever, bleak, realistic, talky, political thriller, retro
Similar in 76%
Topaz (1969)
Plot Summary:
A French intelligence agent becomes embroiled in the Cold War politics first with uncovering the events leading up to the 1962 Cuban Missle Crisis, and then back to France to break up an international Russian spy ring.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 143 min
Plot tags: suspense, tense, suspenseful, psychological, political thriller, enigmatic, psychological thriller, exciting, retro, art house
Similar in 77%
The Company (2007)
Plot Summary:
Real-life figures from the Cold War era mix with a fictional story based on a group of CIA operatives and their counterparts in the KGB, MI6, and the Mossad.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 286 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, epic, captivating, suspenseful, serious, realistic
Similar in 80%
The Americans (2013)
Plot Summary:
Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and their neighbor, Stan Beeman, an FBI Counterintelligence agent.
IMDB Rating: 8.4
IMDB Votes: 109000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 44 min
Plot tags: exciting, realistic, captivating, atmospheric, suspenseful, dramatic, sexy, neo noir, political, dark
Similar in 77%
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
Plot Summary:
In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 290 min
Plot tags: clever, talky, serious, political thriller, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative, tense, atmospheric, thought provoking