Favourite TV Spies

[iff]

for me, it has to be Michael Westen from Burn Notice

 

although I do really like Carrie Matheson and Sterling Archer.

[daveb]

I wanted to vote for more than one - Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, Simon Templar (although not actually a spy), John Steed and Emma Peele, the men from UNCLE and the girl from UNCLE, the Mission Impossible team (from the old tv series, not the modern movies). Maybe others I can't think of at the moment. Honorable mention to Secret Agent Man before he became The Prisoner (although I don't recall much about that show. Apparently I don't know much about the tv spies from the 80s to the present day.  

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Mycroft Holmes...

[Grumpy Alien]

Agent Peggy Carter, of course! I’m not familiar with the majority of these. I’ve heard of some of the shows but the only one I’ve seen is Agent Carter, which I loved.

[Goonie]

Of those listed Sterling Archer. My all time favorite is probably from The Prisoner. 

[AvatarRand]

Huh. No one likes nikita huh? Alias was good as well if anyone remembers lol. Now i kinda wanna rewatch it. Dang  

[Karst]

I love Elim Garak (Deep Space 9) far too much.

[cavalier080854]

"I am not a number, I am a free man"

[theotherpope]

Great thread and some good choices up top I went with 'another tv spy', Sameen Shaw from Person of Interest. 

 

(Though I guess technically she's an agent? It involves sleuthing so I'm counting it.) 

[Skycaptain]

I prefer a shepherd'spy. 😛 😛 

[ben8884]

I guess I am the only Americans fanatic here? If you've never seen the Americans I  solidly recommend it 

[Larkaloke]

I picked Number Six, but I wanted to also vote for Steed (and Emma Peele if possible), and feel that John Drake should've been on there (and might well have selected him, were that the case... although if one goes with the Drake is Number Six theory, I already did).

[The Terrible Travis]

why is perry the platypus not on this list

[Knight of Cydonia]

What about the spies of Totally Spies! I loved that show as a kid.

[everywhere and nowhere]

I don't know these shows and, by the way, now I haven't watched TV for years. But my favorite is Hans Kloss from the Polish TV series "Stawka większa niż życie" (I don't think that it has an official English translation. Some variants proposed were "Playing at High Stakes" and "You Bet Your Life", the German translation was aired as "Sekunden entscheiden", or "Seconds decide"). The story goes so: the protagonist (real name Stanisław Kolicki) is a Pole who had lived in Danzig for many years and studied there, and so he can speak German like a native. He happens to be a look-alike of a German Nazi agent named Hans Kloss and so... the agent is kept in a Soviet prison and Kolicki takes his place in the Abwehr while in fact being a spy.

My favorite episode was "Iron Cross", which shows very well how he can seem inconspicuous while in fact doing deserved harm to the Reich. The story goes as follows:

Kloss comes to the mansion of a Polish count who is also a spy, to deliver some secret microfilms and also to pick up his boss, colonel Reiner - the count's mother was German and so he is respected by the Nazis and not treated as a subhuman like other Polish people. Other Nazi officers get drunk at the count's mansion and one of them accidentally discovers a hiding place in his bathroom. His butler, who is also a spy, manages to escape and warns Kloss. Together they form a plan: they want the count to start informing, but to inform on people who are innocent from the Reich's point of view and serious criminals from a decent person's point of view. Of course, Kloss can't say anything openly, he can only appear to participate in the count's interrogation and make some covert suggestions. The plan works, the counts takes his hints and starts informing on officers supposedly involved in a plot against Hitler. Some of them are arrested and start betraying others to avoid torture, a general is just secretly murdered and it is blamed on "Russian bandits". In the end the Nazis become afraid of such a talkative suspect and order to have him transferred to another prison. In the book version the count is killed, in the TV version he is wounded and then smuggled out of hospital. But Kloss survives, manages to overpower a Volksdeutsch who was working for the Abwehr and extract the only real testimony in this case: the young man was ordered by colonel Reiner to attack the car and shoot the count and others. Colonel Reiner commits suicide and Kloss, while having in fact dealt a serious blow to the Reich, is considered to having protected it and is awarded an Iron Cross personally by Hitler.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Maybe George Smiley, who was a real one (with another name of course), but he's film not TV.

[flagsforhippos]

I liked Nicholas Lyndhurst as Peter 'Piglet' Chapman in the British sitcom The Piglet Files.

[ColeHW34]

White spy from spy vs spy

[Pramana]

I went with John Steed from The Avengers, although from the same show I'd add Emma Peel because she drove a convertible Lotus Elan.

[Ytterbium]

What about Perry the Platypus?

[iff]

3 hours ago, Ytterbium said:

What about Perry the Platypus?

Limited number of options so that is why there is the last choice 

[GoneForGood]

Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 - I haven't watched most of the other shows (spent a lot of time in my life without a TV, yep, I am weird)

[Dot.2.Dot]

On 8/6/2018 at 1:29 PM, AvatarRand said:

Huh. No one likes nikita huh? Alias was good as well if anyone remembers lol. Now i kinda wanna rewatch it. Dang  

Well, I'll tell ya, if I could've voted for more than one, it would've been the UNCLE men AND Nikita. She is such a badass.

[iff]

@iff

 

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