Spying is a serious business IRL but it’s played for laughs on screen repeatedly over the years – from Get Smart and Austin Powers to Spy, Kingsman: The Secret Service and Spies In Disguise. Even the James Bond series has veered pretty close to comedy. Also on that list is Intelligence, Sky Comedy’s hugely entertaining espionage sitcom, and there’s good news: it’s back this Saturday for an hour-long special!

The show stars Friends’ David Schwimmer as brash American NSA agent Jerry Bernstein, or “Jerry the Beast”, in his own head. Jerry has been banished – or as he would see it, sent on a special mission – to Britain’s GCHQ, where he’s working on a new cybercrime division alongside a bunch of geeky British types including Joseph (Nick Mohammed, who also created and wrote the series).

Intelligence has had two series so far, both packed with classic comedy ingredients: the overconfident lead character with almost no self-awareness, workplace irritations, a clash of cultures, and a supporting cast of delightfully weird types. But it’s a bit more than that because of, you know, all the spycraft and whatnot, which means the dramatic stakes can be high too.

Speaking of which, in this new special (titled A Special Agent Special) fans will get to find out what happened after Jerry was violently abducted while getting a pizza delivered at the end of the second series. There’s also some unfortunate news for division boss Christine (Sylvestra Le Touzel, Utopia) as the team gets to work on keeping the upcoming G7 summit safe.

A lot of the laughs in Intelligence stem from the culture clash. Jerry expects the kind of extravagantly funded, super-slick operation he’s known in the US but is forced to get used to the nerds of GCHQ in all their glorious British awkwardness. This works wonderfully on screen thanks to Mohammed’s writing and the talented cast, but the main reason is Schwimmer, with his biggest-sitcom-in-the-history-of-the-world credentials and skills. And he’s certainly not the first US star to take a lead role in a British TV programme. Here are some of our favourites.

Rob Lowe in Wild Bill

Find it in Apps & Games > ITVX

Rob Lowe went from 80s movie star in the likes of The Outsiders and St Elmo’s Fire to high-profile US TV star in The West Wing and Parks & Recreation – so it was a surprise when he swapped Los Angeles for Lincolnshire in this ITV police drama. Lowe plays Bill Hixon, bringing high-tech American policing wizardry to a local English force that’s struggling to cope. He’s got an algorithm for everything except, of course, friendship, which he finds with enthusiastic trainee detective Muriel Yeardsley (Bronwyn James, Lockwood & Co).

Elizabeth McGovern in Downton Abbey

Find it in Apps & Games > Netflix

Oscar-nominated for 1981’s Ragtime, Elizabeth McGovern went on to lead roles in the likes of The Bedroom Window and She’s Having A Baby, building an impressive career on both stage and screen. Having moved to England in the 1990s after her marriage to British producer Simon Curtis, she was the perfect choice to play the glamorous heiress Cora Levinson, wife of the (relatively) impoverished Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville, W1A) in Downton. She’s now played the character in 52 episodes and two movies.

Andy Samberg in Cuckoo

Find it in Apps & Games > BBC iPlayer

This sitcom about a middle-class British family upended by the arrival of a loopy American hippie needed the perfect casting to work. Andy Samberg, who combines a sweet-natured boy-next-door appeal with a kind of unhinged unpredictability, was the exact right person to play Cuckoo (just as The Cleaner’s Greg Davies was spot-on as frustrated patriarch Ken). Samberg only lasted one memorable series before his US sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine took off; he was replaced in the cast by Twilight star Taylor Lautner – playing Cuckoo’s long-lost son, of course! – and later by Andie MacDowall (Four Weddings And A Funeral).

Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Honourable Woman

Find it in On Demand

Writer Hugo Blick made his name with The Shadow Line, which was so good that when he followed it up The Honourable Woman, he got Maggie Gyllenhaal – fresh off hits like The Dark Knight and White House Down, and an Oscar nomination for Crazy Heart – to star. Gyllenhaal is magnetic (and shows off a convincing English accent) as businesswoman Nessa Stein, whose ambitious West Bank infrastructure project runs into trouble after her business partner’s mysterious death leads to unsettling revelations – the tension coming to a head when her friend’s son is kidnapped.

Jeremy Piven in Mr Selfridge

Find it in Apps & Games > ITVX

Entourage was a huge international hit in the Noughties and ran for eight seasons, with Jeremy Piven its breakout star as unscrupulous agent Ari Gold. We don’t know if he brought his three Emmy awards with him to the UK when he played department store magnate Harry Selfridge in this glossy art-deco drama, but we do know he brought an absolute ton of charisma and charm that helped Mr Selfridge to run for four series and become a success around the world.

Paul Dano in War & Peace

Find it in Apps & Games > BBC iPlayer

The cast of this epic 2016 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s sprawling novel is packed with actors whose careers were on upward trajectories: Lily James (Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again), James Norton (Happy Valley), Jessie Buckley (Men), Tom Burke (Strike), Jack Lowden (The Gold) and more. At the centre of it, though, is Paul Dano as awkward but well-meaning Pierre Bezukhov, caught up in a terrible war and an almost equally unpleasant marriage. So memorable opposite Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Dano has carved out an impressive film career in Little Miss Sunshine, 12 Years A Slave, The Batman and more.

Martha Plimpton in A Town Called Malice

Thursdays, 9pm, Sky Max HD (CH 111) or find it in On Demand

A big part of the appeal of Sky Max’s new 80s-set drama is seeing Martha Plimpton – who became famous in the same decade in Hollywood movies such as The Goonies, The Mosquito Coast and Parenthood – play a south London gangster known as Mint Ma. Plimpton is terrific in this show that’s a wild mix of crime thriller, period drama and jukebox musical, staring down ne-’er-do-wells and firing off cockney curses as if she’d been born on the meanest of London’s mean streets. 

Christopher Walken in The Outlaws

Find it in Apps & Games > BBC iPlayer

Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws, about a group of low-level criminals who discover a stash of cash while doing community service, features well-known faces from British TV such as Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), Darren Boyd (Lucky Man) and Claire Perkins (EastEnders). It also has CHRISTOPHER FLIPPING WALKEN, Oscar-winning star of The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, Pulp Fiction, A View To A Kill and loads more gigantic hit films. He’s also in the celebrated Fatboy Slim video for “Weapon Of Choice” as well. As being. A famous. And distinctive. Slow. TALKER. And here he is playing a small-time Bristol conman. Amazing stuff.

When is Sky Comedy’s Intelligence special on TV?

The hour-long Intelligence: A Special Agent Special is on Saturday 8 April at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109) and Sky Comedy HD (CH 112). It will also be available in Catch Up > Channels > Sky Comedy.