The BEST episodes of The Border

Every episode of The Border ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Border!

In this post-9/11 world the once "undefended border" that divides Canada and the U.S. is no longer considered soft. This CBC program lifts stories from the headlines to fuel an action-packed, dramatic series about maintaining security in today's world. The series follows the Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) main team led by Major Mike Kessler.

Last Updated: 1/10/2024Network: CBC (CA)Status: Ended
Share:
Going Dark
star
8.79
38 votes

#1 - Going Dark

Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/22/2008

ICS discovers that toxic sludge is being trucked across the border and dumped in the Canadian wilderness. They follow a trail to a vicious criminal gang, who gain control over Gray and his father. As Gray struggles to save his father, he sets off a chain of events which bring about the season's shocking conclusion.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
The Dead
star
8.14
42 votes

#2 - The Dead

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/8/2009

Kessler and Carver hover near death while Gray hunts down Layla’s killers. A bloody highway shoot-out with the crime mob ‘Ndrangheta has left Major Kessler and Agent Carver fighting for their lives. The Squad is forced to the sidelines, as Special Counsel Louise Tilden investigates the role of ICS in the much-publicized tragedy. Meanwhile, Gray, who has been suspended from duty, sets out to avenge the murders of Layla and his father Dougie.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Restricted Access
star
8.11
36 votes

#3 - Restricted Access

Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/3/2008

A sailor jumps ship in Halifax harbour and tells a disturbing tale: the ship's captain, Ryan McKay, threw a Nigerian stowaway couple overboard to drown – and somewhere on the ship, their two children await a similar fate. But is the sailor telling the truth? Or simply getting even? As Kessler and Agent LaGarda search for the truth, Gray and Layla make a shocking discovery – a terrifying virus which threatens to turn the rusted freighter into a ghost ship.

Writer: Steve Lucas
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Grave Concern
star
8.10
39 votes

#4 - Grave Concern

Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/24/2008

ICS intercepts a pedophile and finds an image of a kidnapped child on his hard drive. Her captor, a psychological sadist known only as Skinner, has managed to evade the law for over a year. Now time is running out. Skinner's "experiment"? is coming to a close – and he's selling his captive to the highest bidder.

Directors: John Fawcett
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Normalizing Relations
star
8.10
40 votes

#5 - Normalizing Relations

Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/10/2008

A visiting Cuban official is marked for murder by an anti-Castro assassin, and it's up to ICS to stop it. Gray and Layla target the assassin's son – an up-and-coming boxer named Roberto Abrantes. Then Kessler and Slade discover another surprising family connection – between the visiting official and Agent Lagarda. Could ICS be tracking the wrong killer?

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Civil Disobedience
star
8.07
40 votes

#6 - Civil Disobedience

Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/17/2008

When his daughter Zoe is arrested during a protest at the border, Kessler is suspected of leaking classified information. With his career in peril, and forced to withdraw from the case, Kessler struggles to protect his daughter from nuclear saboteurs.

Directors: Ken Girotti
Writer: David Barlow
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Enemy Contact
star
8.03
38 votes

#7 - Enemy Contact

Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/25/2008

ICS and CSIS uncover plans for a major terrorist attack on Toronto. Kessler believes the key to preventing the attack may lie with an unlikely source – Sorrayya, a burqa-clad wife and mother. Can ICS manipulate a mother's love to find out crucial information? And what collateral damage is Kessler willing to risk to prevent catastrophe?

Directors: Michael DeCarlo
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Family Values
star
8.02
40 votes

#8 - Family Values

Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/18/2008

When Toronto hosts a U.N. conference on "Children in the Crossfire,"? ICS allows a movie star to enter Canada with her latest accoutrement – her adopted son Ali, a Darfur refugee with no papers or official passport. Then a man arrives from the Sudan, claiming to be Ali's father. A shocking chain of events follows, splitting the squad and exposing the boy's true identity.

Directors: Philip Earnshaw
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Blowback
star
8.00
9 votes

#9 - Blowback

Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 3/31/2008

When Kessler discovers a Croatian warlord living under Canadian protection, it brings back painful memories of the war in Bosnia – and the massacre he helped cover up. Unable to let it go, he prepares to sacrifice everything in the name of justice.

Directors: John Fawcett
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Broken
star
7.97
39 votes

#10 - Broken

Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/15/2009

Agent Bianca LaGarda escorts seventeen year-old Ali Jabir, a Canadian resident with ties to terrorists and just released from Guantanamo Bay, back to Canada. Kessler and ICS enter questionable moral territory as they use Ali as bait to capture notorious terrorist Nasim Mujab, Ali’s childhood friend. Slade – assisted by CSIS agent and language expert Khalida Massi - uncovers an impending terrorist attack on Toronto. At the official inquiry into the ‘Ndrangheta shoot-out, the future of ICS is at risk.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Bride Price
star
7.97
63 votes

#11 - Bride Price

Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/19/2009

Khali becomes personally involved in the case of Mina Diwan, a strong-willed Indian 18-year-old who arrives in Canada looking for her "runaway groom". Using a false identity, Anwar Singh has married Mina in the Punjab and stolen her family's $50,000 dowry. Unwilling to return to her strict Indian family, Mina seeks out Canadian relatives to sponsor her for citizenship, but they too disapprove of Mina's modern ways. ICS learns that one of Anwar's previous brides is missing and presumed dead. When Mina goes missing, Khali and the Squad must race to save her.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Shifting Waters
star
7.95
38 votes

#12 - Shifting Waters

Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/15/2008

With global warming, the Arctic has become navigable, and the race to claim it heats up. As a four-nation conference on the issue unfolds in Toronto, a faraway collision under the polar ice turns a group of Canadian sailors into bargaining chips. Kessler and ICS must find a way to broker a deal that saves the sailors without selling out Canada's future in the Arctic -- even if that means betraying personal bonds to U.S. Agent Carver, and British operative Charlotte Bates.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Peak Oil
star
7.95
37 votes

#13 - Peak Oil

Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/27/2008

In southern Alberta, an eco-terrorist sabotages a pumping station, and cracks the mainframe of Westech Oil. Gray and Layla travel to Calgary, where they uncover an international corporate espionage scheme to disrupt the sale of groundbreaking oil extraction technology. Layla meets, and falls for, Jimmy Kosik, a hot "environmental consultant"?, but Gray discovers that Jimmy is not who he seems.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
The Sweep
star
7.94
67 votes

#14 - The Sweep

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/17/2008

A media frenzy erupts when it's leaked that 41,000 illegal immigrants, all with deportation orders, have gone missing across Canada. As Minister Fleischer takes the heat, Kessler and his ICS squad swing into action, rounding up illegals: from Colombian drug lords to South Asian cyber-sweatshop workers. When Maggie encounters two young Filipino children, victims of human trafficking, she crosses the line, and becomes personally involved.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Dark Ride
star
7.94
66 votes

#15 - Dark Ride

Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/26/2009

A snuff film is confiscated at the Maine-New Brunswick border, and Carver finds the body of the film's victim Stateside. ICS traces the video back to the vicious biker gang, Satans Guard. Maggie goes to the east coast to see her estranged daughter Kim whose boyfriend, a former member of the gang, is eager to inform on his former associates. Meanwhile, ICS learns of a cross-border serial killer – who has just set his sights on Kim.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Hate Metal
star
7.93
67 votes

#16 - Hate Metal

Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/29/2009

Now back on active duty, DHS Agent Liz Carver tracks a murder suspect, the notorious white-supremacist Cole Thorpe, to Canada. Kessler assigns Gray to infiltrate Thorpe's British Columbia-based neo-Nazi operation. Carver still blames Gray for the 'Ndrangheta debacle and her own injuries. When Gray learns the neo-Nazis are planning a devastating act of racial terrorism, Carver must work with him to stop it.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Missing in Action
star
7.92
40 votes

#17 - Missing in Action

Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/5/2009

In Afghanistan to consult on border security, Kessler and a young DHS agent, Henry Masoud, are kidnapped and held for ransom. Kessler must calm a fearful Henry as they face torture and intimidation. Darnell and Carver join NATO's search and discover that General Zaki, their prime suspect, is also their best hope of getting Kessler and Masoud out alive.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Compromising Positions
star
7.89
9 votes

#18 - Compromising Positions

Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/4/2008

Kessler bows to pressure from ex-lover and Cabinet Minister Suzanne Fleischer to arrange the release of three illegal Russian strippers. The story is leaked to the press, and the Squad is exposed to ridicule. When the strippers' Russian boss turns up with a bullet in his head, Kessler unearths a conspiracy that mingles sex, blackmail, and political intrigue at the highest level.

Directors: Kelly Makin
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Unacceptable Risk
star
7.89
36 votes

#19 - Unacceptable Risk

Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/8/2008

MI-6 Agent Charlotte Bates escorts a Tamil gang member to Toronto for his son's life-saving surgery. In return, the man will testify, in a British court, against a leading terrorist. The neurosurgeon set to perform the boy's operation is killed and violence erupts in the city's Tamil community. Faced with an escalating gang war, Kessler must make an agonizing choice.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Killer Debt
star
7.86
37 votes

#20 - Killer Debt

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/22/2009

When wealthy philanthropist Benjamin Herzog is murdered, the prime suspect is his financial advisor Cyrus Church. Church has engineered a massive Ponzi scheme to defraud his investors of billions. Foreign operatives determined to recover stolen funds are also looking for Church. And complicating matters, Church's new trophy wife is Svetlana Karpov, a dead-sexy Russian stripper from Kessler's past. ICS's newest agent, Khalida Massi, finally gets a chance to prove herself in the field.

Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Physical Assets
star
7.83
12 votes

#21 - Physical Assets

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/11/2008

Gray and Layla take down a human-trafficking operation in Vancouver, but the ring leader, Lo Hok-Yin, evades capture – with possible help from CSIS. As Slade struggles to stop a leak in ICS security, the team unearths the crime lord's grisly new business. And the bloody trail leads to an old adversary.

Directors: John Fawcett
Writer: Sarah Dodd
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Gross Deceptions
star
7.80
41 votes

#22 - Gross Deceptions

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/28/2008

A dangerous Belgian arms dealer arranges the theft of anti-tank weapons from a Canadian military base – and they seem to be headed stateside. As they track the weapons, Kessler and LaGarda must contend with disgruntled ex-Airborne soldiers, a criminal mastermind who's three steps ahead of them, and the young truck driver caught in the middle.

Directors: Kelly Makin
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Pockets of Vulnerability
star
7.78
78 votes

#23 - Pockets of Vulnerability

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/7/2008

Major Mike Kessler and his Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) Squad arrest Tariq Haddad, a Syrian terrorist, at the Toronto airport. They also detain the man seated next to him, Nizar Karim. But is Karim really an accomplice or merely an innocent bystander? When CSIS sends Karim to Syria's infamous Tadmoor prison, Kessler vows to bring him home. (Note: This is the pilot episode, shot in October, 2006.)

Directors: John Fawcett
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Bodies on the Ground
star
7.70
44 votes

#24 - Bodies on the Ground

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/21/2008

A Rendition aircraft goes down in the town of St. Calais in Quebec with 3 Muslim terrorists attacking a local constable and seizing his vehicle with a Military police officer as a hostage after escaping from US Military custody, forcing Mike Kessler to hunt down the 3 men with Joint Task Force Two commandos sent in to capture them.

Directors: John Fawcett
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
Gray Zone
star
7.60
48 votes

#25 - Gray Zone

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/14/2008

Kessler and US Homeland Security Special Agent Bianca LaGarda intercept the smuggling of millions of dollars across the St. Lawrence River. Together, they must work with the Mohawk Police to uncover an Albanian money laundering operation at the reserve's new casino. ICS Agent Gray Jackson goes undercover as a gambler, but when a wild card from his past shows up, his luck runs out.

Directors: John Fawcett
Writer: Jeremy Hole
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV