‘Spy Wars With Damian Lewis’ Enters the World of Global Espionage

Smithsonian Channel is set to investigate some of the most shocking and explosive cases of espionage over the last 50 years in the new series Spy Wars with Damian Lewis, premiering Sunday, March 22.

This eight-part series features the incredible true stories of spy wars fought in the shadows, from the turbulent years of the Cold War to the Iran Hostage Crisis and the discovery of a complex web of sleeper agents living in the U.S. – a major inspiration for the plot of The Americans.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Channel

Each episode sees host Damian Lewis revealing these remarkable tales of the secretive world of government intelligence, surveillance and international conspiracy plots with interviews from the experts and eyewitnesses that lived through them.

The series premiere episode, The Man Who Saved the World, recounts the story of Oleg Gordievsky – a KGB agent who may have singlehandedly averted World War III.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Channel

Posted to the Soviet embassy in London by the KGB, Gordievsky would become disenfranchised by the Soviet agenda and, in a shocking move, flipped to become a double agent for British intelligence MI6.

What was to follow was a years-long effort by Gordievsky to pass Soviet intelligence to the British, all but preventing a nuclear Armageddon between the Soviet Union and the West.

Spy Wars with Damian Lewis, Series Premiere, Sunday, March 22, 8/7c, Smithsonian Channel