If you loved ‘Legends,’ check out these undercover crime thrillers next

“Legends” is one of the most underrated shows of the year, and I don’t say that lightly. I ripped through this thing in like four days because it’s that good, and also because it’s only six episodes, so it’s dangerously easy to binge. The acting, the story, and the whole ’90s undercover crime world are all masterful, but Tom Burke in particular is mesmerizing. As soon as I finished, all I wanted was more: more false identities, more life or death stakes, more people trying to survive inside criminal worlds they were never really built to enter. So if you loved “Legends” and need another undercover crime thriller to fall into next, these are the four shows I’d watch first.

Legends

May 7, 2026

As drugs flood the streets of ’90s Britain, a team of civil servants is thrust undercover to topple the gangs behind it.

Loved ‘Legends’? Watch: ‘Undercover’

“Undercover” is the most obvious next stop if what hooked you in “Legends” was the drug-world infiltration. The series follows two undercover agents who pose as a couple and move into the weekend orbit of Ferry Bouman, a major drug kingpin whose operation they’re trying to crack from the inside. That setup is so simple and so stressful, because the whole mission depends on them becoming believable enough to earn his trust without giving away who they really are.

Now, fair warning, this is a Dutch-language show, but if you can get past the subtitles, what makes it such a strong follow-up is how close and personal everything gets. “Legends” has Customs workers building false identities to get inside Britain’s drug networks, while “Undercover” puts its agents right next door to the target. That means the danger isn’t just in big criminal meetings or tense police work. It’s in casual conversations, neighborly hangouts, and all the little moments where one wrong answer could blow the whole thing apart. If you wanted more of that super intense, one-wrong-word and you’re blown undercover tension, this is the pick.

Undercover

February 24, 2019

Undercover agents infiltrate a drug kingpin’s operation by posing as a couple at the campground where he spends his weekends. Inspired by real events.

Check out: ‘Slow Horses’

“Slow Horses” may not be the perfect match on the surface because it’s not a drug infiltration show, but it absolutely belongs here. The Apple TV series follows a group of disgraced MI5 agents who have been dumped at Slough House, which is basically where careers go to cough, wheeze, and slowly die. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, their filthy, brilliant, impossible boss, and the whole thing runs on bad management, dark jokes, and people everyone else has written off. I read the book earlier this year (which is excellent), and the show does a great job of dramatizing some of the slower bits and keeping everything else that makes it tick.

What both series do well is show that government work is not always sleek, heroic, or remotely glamorous. Sometimes it’s messy people in broken systems trying to keep something terrible from happening. “Legends” gives you Customs workers learning to survive undercover in real time, while “Slow Horses” gives you intelligence rejects who somehow keep ending up in the middle of serious spy disasters. It’s more sarcastic and more openly funny, but if you loved the British institutional grit of “Legends,” this is an easy one.

Slow Horses

April 1, 2022

Follow 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.

Watch next: ‘The Night Manager’

“The Night Manager” is the sleek version of the undercover world. Tom Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier turned hotel night manager who gets pulled into an operation targeting Richard Roper, a rich, charming, deeply dangerous arms dealer played by Hugh Laurie. Pine has to work his way into Roper’s inner circle, which means smiling, lying, watching everything, and pretending the room is not constantly closing in around him. This is another book I read earlier this year, and I was super curious how the series would bring enough action to an otherwise pretty slow-moving (but excellent) book.

It totally delivers, and compared to “Legends,” this one is much glossier. “Legends” feels like undercover work in pubs, offices, cars, and criminal backrooms. “The Night Manager” gives you yachts, expensive hotels, perfect manners, and people who can ruin lives without raising their voices. But underneath all that polish, the appeal is still the same: a man living a role so completely that every conversation becomes a test. If you loved the cover-story pressure in “Legends” but want something a little more elegant and dangerous, this is the move.

The Night Manager

February 21, 2016

Former British soldier Jonathan Pine navigates the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington where an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. To infiltrate the inner circle of lethal arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, Pine must himself become a criminal.

Wildcard pick: ‘The Bureau’

“The Bureau” is the serious deep-end pick, and I mean that as a compliment. The French spy series follows agents working inside the DGSE’s Bureau of Legends, the unit that creates and manages deep-cover identities for operatives in dangerous places. At the center is Guillaume Debailly, also known as Malotru, who returns to Paris after years undercover in Syria and finds out that leaving the fake life behind is not nearly as simple as coming home.

This is the show to watch if the thing that really stuck with you from “Legends” was the identity part. Yes, the criminal danger is exciting, but the bigger question is what happens when pretending to be someone else stops feeling like pretending. “The Bureau” takes that idea and digs way deeper into it. It’s slower, more patient, and more psychologically intense than “Legends,” but that’s why it works as the wildcard. It’s less about the rush of the operation and more about the damage that comes after living too long under another name.

The Bureau

April 27, 2015

Within the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security), a department called the Office Of Legends (BDL) forms and remote pilot the most important agents of the French intelligence services: Clandestine. Immersion in hostile country, their mission is to identify individuals who may be recruited as sources of information. Operating “under caption”, that is to say in a fabricated identity from scratch, they live for many years in a permanent duplicity. Our hero just returned from a clandestine mission six years in Damascus. But contrary to what is required by safety rules, he does not abandon his legend and the identity under which he lived in Syria, thus putting in danger the whole system.