Spymasters: The Great Spy Writers (Documentary, English)
Status: Running
Premiered: 2026-03-31
Network: Sky Arts
Country: GB
Airs on: Tuesday
Air time: 21:00
Runtime: 60 minutes
Spymasters: The Great Spy Writers explores the lives, works, and secrets of some of the most brilliant spy authors in literature.They have shaped what has become a hugely popular genre, weaving intricate plots, clandestine operations, and intense suspense into their novels, and sometimes exploring political issues and international relations with unsettling and often cynical insight.Successful film and television franchises have been built around spies, while spy novels sell in great numbers. Lying behind recurring plots based on the successful negotiation of risk and betrayal safely exposed is an altogether bleaker world, based on violence, and incessant surveillance by state actors to benefit state activities.The series explores the interlocking world of public and private, state and individual and combines analysis of the biographies of the writers and their work, together with an examination of the geopolitical settings in which they operate.