Espionage (TV series)
British dramatic television series

Espionage is a British TV spy anthology series broadcast on the ITV network in the UK and on NBC in the USA for a single series in the autumn of 1963. Its American run lasted from October 2, 1963, until September 2, 1964.
Synopsis
Made from actual case histories, episodes used newsreel and documented narratives to show the activities of spies from various countries as far back as the American Revolution and as recent as the Cold War.
Guest cast
Featured guest stars included:
Martin Balsam
David Kossoff
Dennis Hopper
Patricia Neal
Joan Hickson
Patrick Troughton
Billie Whitelaw
Patrick Cargill
Jill Bennett
Millicent Martin
Anthony Quayle – a real-life "spy" with the Special Operations Executive during World War II.
Production
Herbert Hirschman and Herbert Brodkin were the producers.
In the United States, the series was broadcast from 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday nights.
Episode list
This list is in NBC's airdate order.
Critical response
Cynthia Lowry, in a review of the premiere episode for the Associated Press, wrote, "It was well produced and had a fine cast of actors".
“Espionage (TV series)” enters the record as british dramatic television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Espionage, series and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3859276. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Espionage (TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.