Not all spy content has to be constant action and guns blazing. The new Prime Video series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” received that memo.
All eight episodes of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" season 1 are streaming on Prime Video
While espionage is certainly a part of the slow-burn show, as we note in our "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" review, the budding relationship between Donald Glover’s John Smith and Maya Erskine’s Jane Smith takes center stage. Who doesn’t love an arranged marriage facilitated by their employer? For anyone looking for that highly coveted work-life balance, the spy life might not be in the cards.
After binging all eight episodes of the series, there are plenty of other romance-focused spy and action shows to fill the void if you loved the Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane-created series. And after you’ve watched these five shows like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," why not catch the OG movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?
'The Americans'
FX's 2013 drama “The Americans” takes the spy-turned-domestic undercover couple concept and raises it 10 notches. The period series is set in the ‘80s and features a pair of KGB spies living the white picket fence life in the United States. Like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play an arranged marriage couple who were brought together by their mission.
But as they say (no one says this), couples who spy together lie together. So, of course, Elizabeth and Phillip's relationship becomes more genuine as time (a lot of time — well over a decade) goes on. They even have a couple of kids, all while hiding their identities from their next-door neighbor Stan (Noah Emmerich), who just so happens to be an FBI agent whose sole mission is to catch Soviets. Joseph Weisberg created the six-season show that clocks in at 75 episodes.
Watch on Hulu
'Alias'
Some family businesses consist of humble restaurants. Other people learn that their parent is actually a KGB spy. No big deal. Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) follows in her mother’s espionage footsteps when she enters the spy game straight out of college. Except she’s not actually working for the government. Unbeknownst to Sydney, her employer is a terrorist organization — which in hindsight seems like something a spy should have figured out pretty quickly.
When Sydney figures out her paychecks aren’t coming from the CIA, she turns on her employer to take them down with the help of the actual CIA. And what’s a spy show without a love interest? Michael Vartan takes on that role with his character Michael Vaughn. The five-season 2001 show was created by J.J. Abrams.
Watch on Disney Plus
'Prison Break'
Nothing is more badass than tattooing prison blueprints on your body, robbing a bank to get incarcerated with your death-row brother and carrying out a meticulous plan to break him out before his scheduled execution. Like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “Prison Break” is a character-driven show that isn’t incredibly action-heavy at first.
The series hinges on the relationship between brothers Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) and Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), but it also features several romantic tag-teams in their pursuit of taking out the corrupt cabal that set Lincoln up.
The series’ high casualty rate led to a revolving door of talent with actors like Peter Stormare (John Abruzzi), William Fichtner (Alexander Mahone), Jodi Lyn O’Keefe (Gretchen Morgan), and mainstay cast members like Sarah Wayne Callies (Sara Tancredi), Amaury Nolasco (Fernando Sucre), Rockmond Dunbar (C-Note), and Robert Knepper (T-Bag). Paul T. Sheuring created the 2005 series that went on to have four seasons, a straight-to-DVD special and a nine-episode revival in 2017.
Watch on Hulu
'Burn Notice'
What happens when a spy gets the axe? In reality, it would probably mean a death sentence for secret-keeping purposes (do we watch too much spy content? Perhaps). In Matt Nix’s “Burn Notice,” Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) has to head back home to Miami, where he’s expected to carry out his life as if he didn’t just spend his entire career in the espionage game.
Yeah, that’s not happening. Michael doesn’t take his firing lying down, opting to find out who’s responsible for him getting canned. And though he’s blacklisted from his usual contacts, his ex-girlfriend and spy Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar) teams up with him to find out what’s up. He also has to deal with his hypochondriac mother Madeline (Sharon Gless) and enlists the help of the heavily connected Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell).
Watch on Hulu
'Chuck'
There’s hacking and then there’s hacking. Fans might need a pretty significant suspension of disbelief to buy the premise of “Chuck” — which centers on a computer nerd who not only stumbles across an email with classified government secrets, but they get encoded into his brain via subliminal messaging within the file. Just don’t think about it too hard.
Zachary Levi plays the self-titled character Chuck Bartowski, who finds himself embroiled in the world of counter-terrorism while the country’s greatest enemies seek him out to uncover the information embedded in his brain.
Naturally, he gets assigned a couple of agents for protection. Enter CIA Agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) who, of course, becomes Chuck’s love interest. Their escapades are also joined by NSA agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin). The five-season show was created by Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz in 2007.
Watch on Max or Prime Video
