Ukraine and Russia are at war. Political instability and civil war rage in Sudan. Iran is ramping up its nuclear capabilities. The world is basically a mess in “The Agency,” the new espionage series that inundates the viewer with rapidly intersecting story lines set on an increasingly complicated geopolitical playing field.

The series, which premiered last week on Paramount+ (with the Showtime tier), is part of a surge in spy shows that also includes “The Day of the Jackal,” on Peacock; “Black Doves,” premiering this week on Netflix; and “Slow Horses,” which wrapped up its fourth season on Apple TV+ this fall.

True to the genre, these series jet all over the globe (though mostly Europe) and unfold in high-tech command centers and in dark urban alleyways, via thrilling shootouts and furtive meetups. Some operatives pursue sanctioned missions as others go rogue. Multiple cats chase multiple mice, and it’s not always clear who is which.

The most pitched battles, however, happen within the hearts and minds of the individual players. Even as the new spy shows reflect a fraught, tangled and mercenary post-Cold War world, the existential threats and conflicts are more interior, intimate and, in many ways, timeless.

“It’s the agency,” a Central Intelligence Agency honcho (Jeffrey Wright) tells a field agent (Michael Fassbender) in “The Agency.” “Nothing is personal.” Nothing, that is, except everything.

Based on the French series “The Bureau,” “The Agency” is as much about divided souls as a divided world. The most divided is an undercover agent known as Martian (Fassbender), who is called back to the CIA London station from Addis Ababa, where he appears to have fallen in love with Sami (Jodie Turner-Smith).

Yanked away from his fake identity as a writer and his life with his beloved, Martian doesn’t know which way is up. “He gets the bends,” said Jez Butterworth, who wrote and executive produced the 10-episode first season with his brother, John-Henry Butterworth. “Our story shows the effects of that on him, and on everyone in his life.

“I’m fascinated by that sudden about-face that these people have to do,” he continued. “You’re lying; you’re lying; you’re lying. And then you’re gone.” Except in Martian’s case, Sami follows him, creating a new world of problems back in London.

“We’re saying, ‘Be careful not to rely on these people too much, because they are just human like you and I,’ ” said Joe Wright, an “Agency” executive producer who also directed the first two episodes. “I think it’s always dangerous to either put people on a pedestal or demonize people and throw them to the gutter, in drama and in life. We are all just trying to do the best we can, and more often than not failing miserably.”

The spy genre was once defined by highly skilled adventurers like James Bond and various “Mission Impossible” heroes, but questions of identity and authenticity in such stories are hardly new. The Jason Bourne movies, based on Robert Ludlum’s novels, send an amnesiac operative careening through the world, guided by a fundamental question: Who am I? On television, series such as “Homeland” (2011-20), “The Americans” (2013-18) and “Killing Eve” (2018-22) play with the instability of personality and the thin line between playing a role and becoming that role.

Spy series and movies have become less white and male, with stars like Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve”), Zoe Saldaña (“Special Ops: Lioness”) and Jeffrey Wright (various James Bond movies before “The Agency”). And less strictly heterosexual: Sexual tension charged the dynamic between Oh and Jodie Comer in “Killing Eve,” and a major subplot in “Black Doves” centers on a hit man’s relationship with his ex-boyfriend. Loyalties have grown much murkier, with fewer spies operating out of purely patriotic or ideological interests.

However, as Jeffrey Wright observed, the more human conflicts take precedence. “The political tensions really just serve as highly detailed atmospherics,” he said in an interview.

Or, in the words of Saura Lightfoot-Leon, who plays a young operative thrown into the deep end befriending an Iranian nuclear engineer: “It’s really about the intensity of the sacrifice that is asked of these people. It isn’t a flashy spy show. It’s showing the reality of people who exist for this work.”

Such questions also run through “Black Doves,” which stars Keira Knightley as Helen, a member of an espionage-for-hire organization. Assigned to cozy up to a rising British politician, she ends up marrying and having children with him, then falls in love with a sexy civil servant — who is subsequently murdered. Was he killed because of her?

Pity anyone who grows attached to these people.