The best crime shows of all time

Has there been a more compelling character arc in all of television history than that of Walter White? Bryan Cranston’s defining role started out in season one as a bumbling science teacher brought low by cancer and professional failure. By the time season five rolled around he had morphed into a ruthless drug kingpin, all but unrecognisable to his bewildered family. What’s remarkable about Breaking Bad is the way it treads so lightly and assuredly between such wild extremes. Each episode has shades of light and dark, as slapstick humour mixes with shocking violence and unbearable tension.

You can’t discuss the truly great TV shows without a nod in the direction of The Sopranos. To many commentators, it’s barely up for discussion. James Gandolfini stars in arguably the defining show of TV’s golden era, portraying the fascinating figure of Tony Soprano. This New Jersey mob boss is duplicitous, murderous, dishonest, and thuggish, yet some part of you sympathises with him throughout this impeccable six season run. Funny, heart-breaking, postmodern and psychologically insightful, The Sopranos hits different to any other crime show on TV.

Imagine a world where someone dared to make a spin-off of The Sopranos or The Wire based on one of the minor characters. Now imagine that said series turned out to be a match for the main series, and arguably even grew to exceed it. That’s precisely what happened with Better Call Saul, which takes the sleazy lawyer from Breaking Bad and details his own Shakespearean fall from not-quite-grace. Bob Odenkirk excels as the fast-talking Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, and is ably assisted by Rhea Seehorn, Michael McKean, and Jonathan Banks.

The Wire is one of several shows on this list to be in contention for the title of best TV show ever, regardless of genre. Created by former police reporter David Simon following his work on Homicide: Life on The Streets, it takes an even more forensic look at the relationship between the police, the illegal drug trade, politics, and the media using the US city of Baltimore as a Petri dish. The show doesn’t pull any punches with its grim assessments, yet it also provides a whole cast of compelling characters from either side of the law.

The ambition shown in True Detective season one’s casting, writing, and directing has proved impossible to repeat – and not just by the show’s makers. If there’s a single season of television that can match it anywhere, you’ll have to remind us in the comments below. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play two mismatched Louisiana detectives hot on the trail of a serial killer across two decades. Their efforts are frustrated by a wider conspiracy and dark elements of the occult, not to mention their own simmering differences and personal failings.

Led by the master of Hollywood crime cinema, David Fincher (Seven, Zodiac), Mindhunter made an almighty mess of the Netflix crime scene when it arrived on the streamer in 2017. A true crime series of rare poise, it tracks the founding of the Behavioral Science Unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which saw detectives picking the brains of imprisoned serial killers to try and get an angle on open cases. Lamentably cancelled after two seasons, it’s now widely accepted as one of the finest examples of the format.

The Shield was a quietly revolutionary show, putting the fledgling US FX channel on the map. It did so by tracking the chaotic reign of a decidedly unheroic protagonist at around the same time The Sopranos was doing its thing over on HBO. In this case our antihero was Michael Chiklis’s Vic Mackey, a corrupt detective in an experimental division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The show was also notable for its phenomenal cast, with Glenn Close, Walton Goggins, Michael Peña, and Forest Whitaker all making appearances across its seven seasons.

In Fargo, creator and showrunner Noah Hawley does two incredible things. Firstly, he manages to capture the quirky spirit of the eponymous Coen Brothers film, without borrowing any of its characters or production talent. For another, he manages to pull the trick off five times in a row. This is an anthology crime series that brings together a fresh Hollywood who’s who of acting talent for 10 episodes of funny, violent, incredibly tense drama set in the American Midwest, then does it all over again from scratch.

Event television is largely a thing of the distant past here in the UK, but between 2013 and 2017 the three seasons of Broadchurch briefly saw a return to a more innocent pre-streaming era. This was stuff that had the nation tuning in as one, as Olivia Colman’s DS Ellie Miller and David Tennant’s DI Alec Hardy teamed up to to solve the murder of a child in a sleepy Dorset village. The key to Broadchurch’s success – beyond its exquisite cast – is the subtle, naturalistic way it handles the investigation, and its unflinching depiction of community grief.

You can spot Ozark’s key influence from space, arriving as it did directly in the wake of Breaking Bad. At first glance, Jason Bateman’s chino-wearing accountant, who fatefully keeps the books for a Mexican cartel, is a character type we’ve seen before. However, he never quite breaks bad to the same extent as Walter White, meaning you never quite know where you stand with him. Meanwhile his politically astute wife, played by Laura Linney, grows to become a far more formidable and unpredictable force, while Julia Garner’s brainy hillbilly Ruth Langmore is a starmaking role.

In a bold inverse of the classic crime show formula, Dexter essentially has you rooting for the bad guy. Michael C. Hall’s Dexter Morgan is a complicated man – a forensic technician working for the Miami Metro Police Department who just so happens to be a deeply traumatised serial killer. The key to the show keeping a mainstream audience onside for eight seasons is the way in which our antihero channels his thirst for killing by targeting only his fellow murderers who otherwise appear to have escaped justice.

Calling Justified a police procedural doesn’t quite seem to do it justice. Yes, it concerns a US Marshal solving a variety of crimes in eastern Kentucky. But there’s so much more going on here, not least Timothy Olyphant’s timeless performance as Raylan Givens, a laconic gunslinging lawman who seems to have strolled directly in from the Wild West, only to collide with the complexities of modern life. The writing and characterisation is also top notch, doing full justice to the show’s origins as an Elmore Leonard short story.

Homicide: Life on the Street is often seen as a dry run for The Wire (see elsewhere on this list), which isn’t wholly accurate. Sure, it’s based on a book by David Simon, who went on to create The Wire. And yes, it reflects Simon’s own real life experiences shadowing a Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit as a Baltimore Sun reporter. But Homicide: Life on The Streets was a great series in its own right, blazing a path across seven seasons with its gritty and grounded style.

It’s impossible to overstate what a huge deal Sherlock was when it arrived in 2010. This modern day reboot of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle detective stories effectively wrote the style book for a decade (and more) of glossy British TV productions, and had a pretty huge influence on US television into the bargain. It’s also the thing that helped break Benedict Cumberbatch (as genius detective Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Freeman (as his ex-military companion John Watson) into the big time, not to mention Andrew Scott as a formidable Jim Moriarty.

Can you really class David Lynch’s magnum opus as a crime series? In so much as it concerns itself with the investigation into the murder of a homecoming queen in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington, of course you can. From the moment idealistic FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan) steps into town, however, all bets and genre labels are off. In amongst all the non sequiturs and the surreal dream imagery, however, sits a study in grief as a small town tries in vain to come to terms with its shocking loss.

It can be all too easy to reduce Columbo to a series of sound bites and physical tics, so iconic is the performance of Peter Falk as the bumbling (but not really) homicide detective at its heart. But his whole “Just one more thing” schtick was in service to a remarkably tightly written and impeccably plotted crime series, which smartly showed you the crime being played out in its entirety before Lieutenant Columbo shuffled in and started to put the pieces together in his own chaotic way.

Alongside The Killing, The Bridge forms one of the foundational texts for our love of dark Scandinavian crime drama. Also like The Killing, The Bridge centres on an iconic central performance from the actor playing the lead detective. This time it’s Sofia Helin’s Saga Norén, a socially dysfunctional homicide detective working the case from Malmö, Sweden. Kim Bodnia plays her Danish colleague from the opposite side of the Øresund Bridge, on which the remains of a body and evidence of a politically motivated serial killer are found.

Here’s the series that sold a thousand chunky-knit jumpers, and sold us all on Scandi-noir crime thrillers. The first season in particular is a tight and twisting crime story about the brutal killing of a teenage girl. Focusing on the dark, dank side of Copenhagen, it also presented us with Sofie Gråbøl’s iconic turn as Detective Inspector Sarah Lund, a police officer with plenty of personal complications to go with her undoubted skill. Somewhat unusually, it also committed plenty of screen time to the bereaved family of the deceased, as well as the impact on a local politician.

This British period drama sports the kind of specific setting and unique tone that sets it apart from pretty much every other crime show on the market. It concerns a tight knit criminal gang operating in Birmingham shortly after the First World War, and features a formidable ensemble cast led by Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy as gang leader Tommy Shelby. When a show can attract such supporting talent as Tom Hardy, Adrien Brody, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Stephen Graham, you know it’s had some impact.

Having a top quality crime show is no guarantee of longevity, as the rest of this list will attest to. That’s why Law & Order’s 20-year uninterrupted run is so remarkable. Not only that, but after running ceaselessly from 1990 to 2010, it then picked up again for several more seasons from 2022. Featuring an unusual revolving door approach to casting and a unique two-half structure to its episodes (the first half for police work, the second covering the court work), Law & Order would be viewed as extraordinary if it hadn’t become part of the crime show furniture