The BBC's 5-Part Sci-Fi Miniseries Is The Night Agent Meets Doctor Who

One 2025 miniseries feels inspired by Netflix’s The Night Agent despite the fact that it is part of the Doctor Who universe and, remarkably, the show somehow makes this balance work. If ever there was a streaming show that could be accused of having a straightforward, clear appeal, it would be Netflix’s spy thriller The Night Agent. Based on the 2019 novel of the same name by author Matthew Quick, The Night Agent is a perfect slice of escapist Dad TV.

The series follows Gabriel Basso’s FBI agent Peter Sutherland as he investigates a knotty conspiracy involving the FBI themselves and a host of geopolitical villains, but the show’s story is really a thinly veiled excuse to set up some thrilling car chases, gun battles, and fist fights. While The Night Agent is great fun as a spy series, no one could mistake the series for a dramatic, heavy, morally complex spy show like The Americans.

Now, if ever there was a show whose appeal is harder to encapsulate in a single sentence, it would be the long-running BBC sci-fi serial Doctor Who. The flagship series in a franchise that also includes The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, and most recently, The War Between The Land And The Sea, Doctor Who is a sci-fi adventure/ comedy/ thriller/ mystery/ fantasy/ horror/ character drama that follows the titular Time Lord as he travels through space and time with an ever-changing rotation of human companions.

The War Between The Land And The Sea Is Doctor Who's Take On A Spy Thriller

Often fun and silly, sometimes deeply disturbing, occasionally heartbreaking and poignant, Doctor Who is the sort of cult curio that completely defies easy genre categorization. Doctor Who’s playful sci-fi has inspired everything from the DC series Legends of Tomorrow to Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty but, unlike many of the shows that follow in its footsteps, Doctor Who can get surprisingly dark and deep at times.

Even for viewers who knew this, it was still something of a surprise when Doctor Who revival show runner Russell T Davies announced 2025’s The War Between The Land And The Sea, a Disney+ BBC One collaboration that effectively acted as a spy thriller set in the Doctor Who universe. Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Russel Tovey, The War Between The Land And The Sea follows the clandestine military operation UNIT’s attempts to stop a war between humanity and the Sea Devils, renamed Homo Aqua for this spinoff.

Mbatha-Raw’s Salt is the Homo Aqua’s Ambassador to humanity while Tovey plays Barclay Pierre-Dupont, a humble transportation logistics manager who stumbles into the role of humanity’s Ambassador to the Homo Aqua. Across the show’s five episodes, the series brings back the slightly more grown-up and darker tone of Doctor Who’s earlier spinoff, Torchwood, as the very human protagonists of UNIT struggle to reach a peaceful accord.

You Can Watch The War Between... With Zero Knowledge Of Doctor Who

If the success of everything from The Night Agent to Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith reboot to Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness proves anything, it is that spy shows are enjoying quite a comeback in the 2020s. Fortunately, The War Between The Land And The Sea takes full advantage of this trend with a story that will make as much sense to Whoniverse novices as it does to longtime fans of the original cult series.

While the critical reception of The War Between The Land And The Sea was somewhat mixed, even the show’s harshest reviewers admitted that Mbatha-Raw’s performance was mesmerizing while the show’s attempts to blend espionage thrills with the quirky world of Doctor Who was largely successful. Thus, while The War Between The Land And The Sea isn’t perfect, this Doctor Who spinoff is well worth seeking for spy show fans who want to add something a little stranger and less predictable to their regularly scheduled programming.