Television series

Andor

A slow-burn espionage thriller wearing a lightsaber's clothing, Andor treats the Empire as bureaucracy and the Rebellion as logistics. There's little mysticism here — just surveillance, informants, prison labour, and people deciding, gradually and at cost, what they're willing to become. It rewards patience with one of the smartest, most adult things Star Wars has ever produced.

TVMaze rating8.0

If you liked this

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story2016

The direct continuation of Cassian's story, and knowing where he ends up makes every scene of Andor hit harder. Same grubby, lived-in Empire, same fatalism about what rebellion costs.

But You already know the ending, which drains some suspense, and it can't match Andor's patience or depth of character.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story poster

The Americans2013

Cold War spies living double lives, wearing down under the weight of ideology and deception. Same interest in what constant lying does to a person, just in Reagan's America instead of a galaxy far away.

But Six seasons of marital and political dread is a big ask, and the pace is even more deliberate than Andor's.

The Americans poster

Chernobyl2019

A miniseries about what a rotten, self-protecting state apparatus looks like from the inside — the meetings, the cover-ups, the small compromises that add up to catastrophe. Dedra Meero would feel right at home.

But It's bleaker and more claustrophobic than Andor, with no rebellion to root for — just consequences.

Chernobyl poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Battle of Algiers1966

Andor borrows its entire structural logic — cells, informants, the cost of turning ordinary people into fighters — from this film's clinical portrait of insurgency, made nearly sixty years earlier.

Shot like a documentary, this dissects an anti-colonial insurgency cell by cell — recruitment, betrayal, the terrible arithmetic of violence against an occupier. It's the film Andor is quietly in conversation with.

But Black and white, unsentimental, and refuses to let you feel good about either side's tactics.

The Battle of Algiers poster
More like this (7)

Slow Horses2022

Disgraced MI5 agents doing unglamorous, morally murky intelligence work, shot through with dry wit. Scratches the same itch for competence and consequence, with a much lighter touch and shorter episodes.

But It's funnier and pulpier than Andor, and the stakes rarely feel as existential.

Slow Horses poster

Line of Duty2012

Interrogation-room tension and institutional rot, British procedural style. Andor's ISB scenes — the interviews, the careful lies, the paperwork of oppression — share DNA with this show's best hours.

But No sci-fi, no rebellion, just police politics — a very different world despite the tonal overlap.

Line of Duty poster

Army of Shadows1969

Jean-Pierre Melville's near-silent, unglamorous portrait of the French Resistance, full of betrayal, fear, and grim necessity. Andor's cell structures and moral compromises owe it a real debt.

But It's cold, formal, and deliberately withholds catharsis — a tough, austere watch by design.

Army of Shadows poster

Bodyguard2018

A tightly wound political thriller about surveillance, loyalty, and people caught between institutions that don't deserve their trust. Efficient, tense, and easy to binge in a weekend.

But Twistier and more melodramatic than Andor, with less interest in ideas and more in plot mechanics.

Bodyguard poster

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy2011

Le Carré's mole hunt distilled into two hours of grey coats, quiet rooms, and men destroying each other with paperwork. The unglamorous ancestor of everything Andor does with its Empire scenes.

But Dense, talky, and easy to lose the thread of if you look away for a minute.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy poster

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex2002no page yet

Swap the Empire for a near-future surveillance state and Cassian for a cyborg cop, and you get the same genre engine — procedural espionage, institutional paranoia — running in an entirely different costume.

An episodic anime about a state security unit tracking hackers and terrorists through a surveillance society, with the same appetite for bureaucratic detail and slow-building political conspiracy as Andor's best stretches.

But It's anime, it's philosophical to a fault, and the cyberpunk trappings will feel alien if you came purely for Star Wars.

Severance2022

Where Andor externalises institutional evil as an Empire, Severance internalises it as a workplace — same interest in how ordinary bureaucratic complicity curdles into something monstrous, just filtered through surrealist dread instead of sci-fi action.

A corporation that turns compliance into an identity, told through eerie, controlled visuals and a slow dread that never tips into action. It's the ISB's office culture, imagined as workplace horror.

But There's no rebellion payoff here, no rousing speeches — just unease that builds and builds with deliberately withheld answers.

Severance poster

People

Cast

Writing

Production

Recommended by