Two American women in Moscow in the late 1970s want to find out how their husbands who were stationed there died, and for this purpose they hire themselves as undercover agents at the CIA an.
Meanwhile, an MI6 employee who was a soldier and hotel manager before being recruited away and now actually does desk duty after a very traumatic case is caught up in the past in today’s London.
At first glance, the premises of the newly launched series “Ponies” (on Wow) and the second season of “The Night Manager” (on Prime Video) don’t have much in common. But their differences illustrate how omnipresent and diverse the current boom is of spy thrillers is.
Tom Hiddleston has to deal with international arms trafficking as Jonathan Pine in “The Night Manager”.
Photo:
lmk/imago
Not that the genre, whose literary roots go back to the 19th century and novels by James Fenimore Cooper, has ever been unpopular. But as many secret agents and intelligence services as in the last few years have rarely been deployed, not least in series form.
“The Night Agent” will enter its next round on Netflix in February, “Slow Horses” and “Diplomatic Relations,” among others, were recently nominated at the Golden Globes, and new seasons of “Black Doves” and “The Day of the Jackal” are also on the program for 2026.
Trend also in Germany
The trend is not limited to English-speaking countries: the French series “Office of Legends” was so successful for five years that it even spawned a US remake called “The Agency”; The third season of the Israeli series “Tehran” (about a Mossad agent undercover in Iran) is currently running on AppleTV.
And even in Germany, where classic police work has always dominated the crime scene, people are now daring to use spies as protagonists. After “Deutschland 83” or “Kleo”, “Unfamiliar” (from February 5th on Netflix) shows this about a couple of agents.
There are reasons why stories about the CIA and MI6, dark conspiracies and ice-cold contract killers are currently in abundance. More and more streaming providers need more and more content, and of course the focus is primarily on genres and narrative patterns that have proven themselves time and again over the years.
The success story of the spy thriller was always a reflection of the global political climate and social mood
Spy thrillers, which always come with a promise of excitement and action, form a good counterpart to cozy crime, that other streaming trend around feel-good crime thrillers à la “The Thursday Murder Club” and Agatha Christie variations, where a leisurely pace and tongue-in-cheek dominate. Glossy images, attractive locations such as luxury hotels or distant countries and lots of high-tech investigative tools – all integral parts of the genre – do the rest in terms of show value.
But the success story of the spy thriller was always a reflection of the global political climate and social mood. The genre experienced its first boom, not least in the form of James Bond, in the 1960s, when the Cold War became noticeably worse. Insights into the world of secret service work, even more hidden from the audience then than today, conveyed a sense of security.
Anyone who wanted to hoped that brave heroes like 007 would know how to prevent the worst in the real world. Or give in to the feeling that, thanks to stories like these, you at least understand a little about the mechanisms by which world events work.
No more clean men
It is no coincidence that, especially in the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and September 11, 2001, which were glorified as peacetime, James Bond’s adventures were more humorously exaggerated and unrealistic than ever before, before pain and trauma found their way into the secret agent world with the Daniel Craig era.
Tormented heroes or better: anti-heroes have been an integral part of the genre ever since – see series like “Homeland” or the “Bourne” films. This fits into a world in which hardly anyone is still addicted to the illusion of clean men and upright saviors. No spy thriller can do without internally torn protagonists and moral gray areas.
These stories still purport to convey a picture of what happens behind the scenes of politics and where the people pulling the strings are located. But the boundaries between good and evil have long since become blurred beyond recognition.
Many current series also reflect the general mistrust that exists towards government authorities of all kinds: where the opponents were once clearly located in Russia, China or the Arab world, depending on the world situation, they are now mostly located in their own institutions.
Glamour, eroticism and trauma
In this respect, the series mentioned at the beginning are not out of the ordinary. In the new season of “The Night Manager”, which starts ten years after the fantastic first one, Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine not only has to realize that he has not completely left what happened back then behind him. In addition, this time his own management team could be directly involved in the drug and weapons deals, which will soon lead him to Colombia, but also into his own past.
A possible traitor in their own ranks is also suspected in “Ponies”, where otherwise, in the best retro style of the KGB, they use nefarious means to make life difficult for the two new agents, who are inexperienced but of course in a permanent emotional conflict, on their mission, which is vaguely described as postmodern-feminist.
Once glamor and eroticism combined with trauma and internal intrigue, once Cold War nostalgia paired with humor, self-discovery and amorous entanglements. The two series show how much variety is possible when it comes to spy thrillers.
However, they also show that, given the abundance of similar series, it now takes more than a reasonably entertaining story and characters with two or three rough edges to leave a lasting impression.