movies & tv
Share icon

Share

One of the best spy thriller movies ever is on TV tonight

Published 16:07 17 Aug 2026 BST

Updated 16:07 17 Aug 2026 BST

Ava Keady
One of the best spy thriller movies ever is on TV tonight

Homemovies & tv

An absolute classic, the film is also available to stream at home now.

Our TV movie pick for tonight (Monday, 17 August) is Three Days of the Condor, one of the best spy thrillers of all time.

Released in 1975 and directed by Sydney Pollack (The Firm), the film stars the late and great Robert Redford as Joe Turner, a quiet CIA codebreaker.

On a seemingly ordinary day, Joe walks into his workplace and finds that all of his coworkers have been killed.

Horrified, he flees the scene and tries to tell his supervisors about the tragedy, only to learn that CIA higher-ups were involved in the murders.

"With no one to trust, and a merciless hit man (Max von Sydow, The Exorcist) close on his tail, Joe must somehow survive long enough to figure out why his own agency wants him dead," the plot synopsis adds.

Based on the James Grady novel Six Days of the Condor, Three Days of the Condor also stars Faye Dunaway as a woman Joe meets while on the run.

Tapping into the same post-Watergate paranoia that also inspired other classic thrillers like Blow Out, The Conversation, and The Parallax View, the Redford movie was a hit at the box office and with critics.

The movie was praised for the actor's likeable lead performance, the chemistry between him and Dunaway, and the tense and twisty story.

Three Days of the Condor is still highly regarded to this day, and it even got a TV show remake in 2018 that ran for two seasons.

The spy thriller classic is airing on TV tonight on the channel Legend at 11.15pm. It's also currently available to stream on the service NOW.

Here are the other movies on TV tonight:

Forsaken - TG4 - 9:30pm

The 2015 Western sees Kiefer Sutherland star as a gunslinger returning to his hometown after years away.

Apollo 13 - ITV4 - 9pm

Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton star in this acclaimed 1995 drama about NASA's ill-fated lunar mission.

Heist - Legend - 9pm

Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Dave Bautista star in this 2015 crime thriller about a casino robbery that goes wrong.

Mission: Impossible III - BBC One NI - 11:10pm

Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in the third entry in the hugely popular action franchise, with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the film's villain. 

Witchfinder General - Legend Xtra - 1:30am

Vincent Price stars in this grisly 1968 British horror film about a notorious witch hunter during the English Civil War.