Hopper Stone / HBO
While there ’s always plenty ofgreat TV on Max , it ’s not often that a overlord director lends his endowment to a limited series . Park Chan - wook , the director behind great movies likeOldboyandThe Handmaiden , is doing just that withThe Sympathizer , a new modified serial based on the novel of the same name .
This is n’t the first sentence that Park has directed TV ( more on that below ) , butThe Sympathizerseems poise to be one of the big show of the outflow . The serial publication follows a spy who move to a refugee camp in the U.S. near the end of the Vietnam War , and continues collecting news for the Viet Cong . If you have a go at it the show and are looking for something like , here are three appearance you should regard .
Hopper Stone / HBO
Slow Horses (2022-)
Although it features an entirely different scope , Slow Horseshas the same mixture of serious and ironic tones asThe Sympathizer . The series focuses on Slough House , a division of MI-5 where the most incompetent federal agent are sent to wither away .
However , the broker at Slough House just keep find ways to get involved in real spy craft , even though they ’re just as likely to mire things up as they are to actually work any problems . Gary Oldman ’s central operation is crucial to the show ’s winner , and the show only continues to improve on itself season after season . It ’s both hilarious and infinitely compelling .
Slow Horsesis streaming onApple TV+ .
The Americans (2013-2018)
A much more straightforwardly serious show with a lot of exchangeable story elements toThe Sympathizer , The Americansfollows two undercover Soviet spies who are stupefy as a married couple . They are so thoroughly undercover that their covers have become their exclusive identity , and much of the show center on the way they often ca n’t come apart the Americans they work all day from who they really are .
Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are both incredible in their central roles , and while the show is n’t nonsensical in the same wayThe Sympathizersometimes is , it does have its episodic instant of levity .
The Americansis streaming onHulu .
The Little Drummer Girl (2018)
Park Chan - wook is obviously best know for the films he ’s take , but he has dabble in TV once before with 2018’sThe Little Drummer Girl . It asterisk Florence Pugh ( Dune : Part Two ) as an actress involved in a whirlwind Romance language with a man she meet on a beach in Greece . Slowly , she rule herself ensconce in a world of assassinations and espionage , and find that her skills as an actress understand pretty well .
When Park does tell history for the small screen , it seems that he enjoy adapting great spy literature . WhileThe SympathizerandThe Little Drummer Girldon’t have identical assumption , it ’s not hard to see the many commonalities between the two series as they both involve spies conflicted over their actions , and both whole kit are some of the best television you ’ll ever see .
The Little Drummer Girlcan be rented or purchased atAmazon Prime Video .
