12 Best Shows Like Killing Eve

A black comedy spy thriller about British intelligence agent Eve Polastri's (Sandra Oh) bizarre, mutually obsessive entanglement with notorious sociopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer), "Killing Eve" is a witty, subversive, female-driven exploration of power and moral relativism. And with just four fast-moving eight-episode seasons to dig into, the Phoebe Waller-Bridge-created, Primetime Emmy Award-winning series makes for a fantastically bingeworthy watch with just one problem: what to watch next once you've blazed through the decadent spy series so good it got a second life on Netflix in 2024. 

In a streaming landscape crowded with formulaic procedurals, middling reality fare, and CGI-saturated brain candy, there are only a handful of shows out there that can scratch the "Killing Eve" itch with a well-written, character-driven drama that's smart, intense, totally bingable, and darkly hilarious — bonus points if it's spiked with spy-fi tropes and powered by formidable women, or includes a smoldering romance and double lives. 

A sexy, snappy spy-fi action show penned by some of the same folks who wrote the last two seasons of "Picard" and adapted Terry Gilliam's best film, "12 Monkeys," into a highly-rated time travel series, "Nikita" is the fourth take on Luc Besson's 1990 French-language film "La Femme Nikita," which introduced a world where young adult offenders charged with heinous crimes are transformed into deadly professional assassins for their respective governments. 

The CW take on Nikita's tale builds out that world, envisioning a black ops division of the U.S. government called Division that operates under the equally shadowy Oversight, an agency responsible for various feats of espionage and assassinations the government needs done without officially getting blood on its hands. Division "recruits" by locating young, attractive death row offenders who have lived hard lives and have nobody to look out for them, faking their executions and effectively enslaving them in a dormitory where they're trained to become highly effective spies and assassins. 

Division's training is comprehensive: computer hacking, weapons training, high-level infiltration and exfiltration, advanced interrogation techniques, multiple languages, and anything else a serious spy could need for the job. The series follows the efforts of troubled teen-turned-assassin Nikita (Maggie Q) after she goes rogue and sets out to take Division down from the inside with the aid of Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca), a drug-addicted youth she forced through recovery. The chemistry amongst the ensemble cast — which includes several "12 Monkeys" stars — strong performances, and clever worldbuilding make this female-driven series a worthy watch.

The show in which "Killing Eve" creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge refined her television writing craftsmanship, "Fleabag" racked up loads of awards during its run, including six Emmys, two Golden Globes, and two BAFTAs. The show's genesis sprang from a one-woman show of the same name written and performed by Waller-Bridge in 2013. It generally follows the same storyline about a woman, known only to the audience as "Fleabag" (Waller-Bridge), as she struggles to navigate life and relationships in London in the wake of her best friend Boo's death.

Through Fleabag's frequent dark humor-laden fourth-wall breaking monologues, we learn she is riddled with grief, guilt, and remorse over the role she played in the accidental death of her friend, who ran into traffic distraught after learning she'd been cheated on. This is exacerbated by the knowledge that, although Boo never learned the truth, the person he cheated with was Fleabag herself. 

A sharp, half-hour black comedy about a woman who deflects her trauma and self-blame with self-deprecating humor, the critically-lauded series is aided by a handful of noteworthy actors, including Olivia Colman, "Ripley" star Andrew Scott, and Fiona Shaw, who plays MI6 head Carolyn Martens in "Killing Eve." With just two seasons and 12 episodes total, it's a perfect series for an afternoon binge. 

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is one of those shows that far too many viewers slept on during its first season. A 2024 reimagining of the 2005 film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, the Prime Video series stars two comedic actors — "Community" and "Atlanta" star Donald Glover and "PEN15" cast member Maya Erskine — who make a piping hot pair of spies together. 

The series imagines an enigmatic black ops organization that pairs up its undercover agents to live as married couples using the names "John Smith" and "Jane Smith." Despite knowing little about the organization they work for, these couples comply with secretive and typically dangerous assignments from an anonymous source delivered through a secure text messaging platform. As the central John (Glover) and Jane (Erskine) of this series work and live together, their assigned relationship grows, ultimately blossoming into a real marriage that is put to the test through a series of mission failures and marital challenges. 

As communication and trust begin to deteriorate between them, the violence escalates and things spin out of control in a series of plot turns and twists that will feel familiar to "Killing Eve" fans. Appearances from a host of fan-favorite actors like Alexander Skarsgård, Parker Posey, John Turturro, Sarah Paulson, Michaela Coel, and Ron Perlman round out this high-action gem of a series.

In a twist on the double life secret agent trope, depressed, lonely Cleveland-based Afghanistan war vet and professional hit man Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) finds himself infused with a new sense of purpose after stumbling upon Gene Cousineau's (Harry Winkler) acting class while pursuing a target. Deciding to change his life and become an actor, Barry signs up for the class but quickly learns it's not that easy to walk away from his old ways.

A half-hour comedy-drama about dreams, identity, and the power our past decisions can have over our lives, "Barry" maintained a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes rating throughout its four-season run and earned a whopping 10 Emmys. Despite its dark subject matter, the series managed to hang on to its mirth throughout its run, with fans and critics praising the show for its camera work, witty writing, and quirky storytelling style. Hader's comedic acting is on point as ever, but his dramatic chops here may come as a surprise for some viewers. 

A dark British comedy-drama starring Ella Purnell from "Yellowjackets" and "Fallout" as Rhiannon "Sweetpea" Lewis, this is the tale of a mousy young newspaper administrative assistant who finds herself on the fast track to becoming a serial killing legend after discovering how stress-relieving murder can be. What follows is a descent into absolute mayhem as Rhiannon faces off with her former childhood bully, Julia (Nicôle Lecky).

Like "Killing Eve," "Sweetpea" finds its central drama driven by an unpredictable and completely unhinged anti-heroine. But unlike the former show's Villanelle with her cat-and-mouse game, Rhiannon has simply had too much of other people's BS, which makes her far more empathetic than she should be. 

The series has been compared to shows like "Dexter," "Killing Eve," and "Yellowjackets," with audiences praising Purnell's performance, particularly the actor's eerie ability to make Rhiannon so relatable and even sympathetic. The guilty-pleasure revenge fantasy is underlined by a perfect female-driven soundtrack, featuring music from the likes of Spice Girls, Katy Perry, Charli XCX, Ladytron, Billie Eilish, and Labi Siffre, plus a score by Isobel Waller-Bridge, sister of "Killing Eve" creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who's also responsible for scoring "Fleabag."

A quirky and critically-acclaimed "howcatchem" murder mystery comedy-drama starring Natasha Lyonne as a sharp-witted former casino waitress with an almost supernatural ability to spot liars, "Poker Face" is one of those utterly charming and breezy shows we could all use a little more of in these troubling times. The series follows Charlie Cale (Lyonne) as she gets drawn into a murder mystery after her bestie Natalie — played by Lyonne's "Orange is the New Black" costar Dascha Polanco — discovers child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on a client's computer, a revelation that results in her death. 

The series draws on cozy mysteries and easy-to-watch one-hour TV dramas like "The Rockford Files," "Highway to Heaven," and "Magnum, P.I." In addition to Benjamin Bratt's recurring role as the casino security head, a long list of recognizable guest stars in the cast adds more magic to "Poker Face," with Ron Perlman, Adrien Brody, John Ratzenberger, Chloë Sevigny, Judith Light, Tim Meadows, Jameela Jamil, Tim Blake Nelson, Nick Nolte, Luis Guzmán, Tim Russ, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Rhea Perlman all showing up, just to name a few. 

"Kleo" is a German-language period piece about Kleo Straub (Jella Haase), a former assassin for the German Democratic Republic (GDR)'s Ministry for State Security (Stasi) — East Germany's Cold War-era secret police. She sets out on a revenge tour to target the Stasi handlers who framed her and had her imprisoned for two years, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and a devastating personal loss. At the time of her imprisonment, Kleo had recently learned she was pregnant with her supervisor's child.

Like "Killing Eve," "Kleo" is a dark comedy revolving around an antihero who's cut from the same cloth as Villanelle. Much like her "Killing Eve" counterpart, Kleo is highly lethal and a master of her craft. And like Villanelle, she knows how talented she is and delights in her work. A colorful, sexy, and wild romp through a strange chapter in Germany's history, "Kleo" is pure escapism helmed by an actor who's an absolute joy to watch.

"Orphan Black" is a wild ride of a science fiction series that fans of cheeky, character-driven espionage stories full of strong antiheroic women will love. Tatiana Maslany of Marvel's "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" shows off her absolutely legendary acting chops as not one, not two or three, but a whopping five cloned main characters in addition to a various assortment of ancillary duplicates that pop up from time to time.

Created as part of a secret underground cloning experiment — a completely illegal one — and raised by a foster mother, con artist and punk girly Sarah Manning (Maslany) has no clue as to her true origin until she spies another version of herself moments before the woman jumps in front of a train. This event sets Sarah's life on a path toward learning the truth about her own identity, which is caught between a tangle of competing entities: one with corporate interests, one filled with fevered religious zealots, and another with a cult-like interest in biohacking. Through her efforts to protect herself and her daughter Kira, the only offspring in an experiment that left its clones sterile, Sarah finds a family of identical sisters, each a unique case study in nature vs. nurture.

Maslany is nothing short of brilliant, effectively pulling off a number of accents that include Sarah's working class elocution (East London), Rachel's posh Received Pronunciation (RP) British English, wild Helena's Ukrainian intonation, Cosima's Californian Bay Area lilt, Beth's Canadian inflection, Katja's German bark, and Alison's Canadian soccer mom, not to mention those of various clones posing as each other.

Like "Breaking Bad," "Weeds," and "Ozark" before it, "Good Girls" is part of the ever-growing genre of "tiger by the tail" bad-breaking crime series that sees its characters dip their toes into the waters of illegal activity only to find everything they do drags them deeper in. 

The comedy-drama series revolves around three suburban Detroit moms who hatch a wild idea to help solve their money problems together: they'll simply rob the local grocery store where one of them works. But predictably, things don't exactly go as planned and they soon find themselves caught up with a gang that had been using the store as a money laundering front. Before they know it, they're involved with a whole host of crimes that put their grocery store shenanigans to shame. 

The series stars Christina Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Whitman as the titular trio and features the likes of Allison Tolman, Jonathan Silverman, and Andrew McCarthy. It's one of those rare gems that finds its footing after the first season, with its second and third season garnering 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Come for the anxiety-riddled crime plot and stay for the magical chemistry between the central trio.

An outstanding series about grief, forgiveness, and the kind of deep and abiding friendship that makes the unbearable parts of life much more bearable, "Dead to Me" is an emotionally beautiful and pitch-black tragicomedy about a woman who unwittingly befriends the hit-and-run driver who killed her husband. 

Set in the wake of her husband's recent death, the series begins with Jen's (Christina Applegate) struggles to work through her grief over his hit-and-run slaying. Through a grief therapy group, she meets and befriends Judy (Linda Cardellini), with whom she quickly begins to bond. But the somewhat unstable Judy, motivated to stalk Jen by the profound guilt she feels over the death of Jen's spouse, is teeming with secrets that eventually have to come to light. 

The frailty and complexity of human psychology, particularly when it comes to weighty issues like grief, loss, and betrayal, are heavily explored in this series. But it's not just a "feelings" show — it's also a nail-bitingly anxiety-riddled crime series, and a hilarious one at that. 

"The Americans" is a completely implausible and always fun series about a pair of Cold War-era deep undercover Russian intelligence agents conducting their generally insane spy business while posing as married Virginia couple Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys). On the outside, they are a typical 1980s family right down to their two typical American children, Henry (Keidrich Sellati) and Paige (Holly Taylor). But underneath it all, they are — or at least they both begin as — U.S.S.R. patriots and true believers in communism, a value system that one of them clings to a little more tightly than the other. 

The series was highly acclaimed during its run, earning a well-deserved four Emmys for outstanding lead actor (Matthew Rhys), outstanding guest actress (Margo Martindale), and outstanding writing. Part of the fun is not in the spy drama, but in the theatrics that ensue through the Jennings' efforts to juggle their family life and strange, complicated marriage with the spy part. It's wild, chaotic, and full of disguises Villanelle would most certainly approve of.

J.J. Abrams' second series as creator after "Felicity," "Alias" is a perfect show for fans of Joss Whedon's beautiful hyper-competent heroines and even bears a few similarities to Whedon's series "Dollhouse" and Terry Matalas' spy series "Nikita." The series stars Jennifer Garner as CIA double agent Sydney Barstow, who works undercover to destroy the fictional global black ops syndicate SD-6. 

Shortly after Sydney spilling too much hot goss about her job with SD-6 to her fiancé Danny (Edward Atterton) gets the man killed by the organization, she becomes privy to two revelations: First, that the organization is not CIA black ops, as she had formerly believed, but instead part of the nefarious global Alliance of the Twelve; and second, that her father is part of the organization. 

To make things right, Sydney signs on with the CIA as a double agent to take down SD-6, forcing her into managing a complicated triple-identity lifestyle. Like another Abrams series, "Fringe," the government agent story is rooted in complex worldbuilding and lore, with science fiction elements that include a 15th-century philosopher and dangerous hidden artifacts connected to a possible impending apocalypse.