Best crime shows of all time

Breaking Bad▲ Rising

A mild-mannered chemistry teacher cooks a batch of blue meth to pay for cancer treatment, and by the finale has become the monster he swore he'd never be — 'I am the one who knocks' is the moment the mask fully drops. Its precision plotting and Walter White's slow-motion moral collapse redefined the antihero arc for a generation, making it the gold standard for character transformation in TV crime.},{

Premiered: 2008Seasons: 5IMDb: 9.5/10

added by IJRin 11 rankings

The Sopranos▲ Rising

Tony Soprano's therapy-session confessions to Dr. Melfi cracked open the mob genre, turning a New Jersey capo's panic attacks into prestige television's founding text. The cut-to-black finale at Holsten's remains the most argued-about ending in TV history, proof of how thoroughly the show rewired audience expectations. It didn't just influence the crime genre — it built the house every other show on this list lives in.},{

Premiered: 1999Seasons: 6IMDb: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 9 rankings

The Wire▲ Rising

David Simon's Baltimore epic treats the drug war as a citywide organism — cops, dealers, dockworkers, politicians, teachers — and refuses easy heroes or villains, culminating in the gutting realization that the game simply resets with new players. It changed what crime TV could be: sociology disguised as serialized drama, endlessly imitated but never matched for scope and honesty. No list like this exists without it at or near the top.},{

Premiered: 2002Seasons: 5IMDb: 9.3/10

added by IJRin 12 rankings

Sherlock▲ Rising

Cumberbatch's rapid-fire deductions and the reinvention of Baker Street for smartphones and CCTV made Holmes feel dangerous and modern again, especially in the Season 2 cliffhanger fall off St. Bart's rooftop that broke the internet. It's the show that proved classic detective fiction could be remixed for a binge-watching age without losing its cerebral bite. Uneven later seasons aside, its early run is essential viewing for reinventing the deduction genre.},{

Premiered: 2010Seasons: 4IMDb: 9/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Better Call Saul

Jimmy McGill's slow, tragic slide into Saul Goodman — sealed by the black-and-white purgatory of the 'Gene' timeline — proved a prequel spin-off could rival, even surpass, its source. Its case-of-the-week legal cons gave way to devastating meditations on complicity, especially through Kim Wexler's quiet unraveling. It elevates the whole Breaking Bad universe from great show to genuine literary achievement.},{

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 6IMDb: 9/10

added by IJRin 9 rankings

True Detective

Rust Cohle's nihilist monologues in the Louisiana swamps, wrapped around that unbroken six-minute tracking shot in 'Who Goes There,' turned a missing-persons case into existential horror. Season one's flashback structure and Yellow King mythology proved an anthology crime show could be pure cinema on a TV budget. It's on this list for that first season alone, a genre high-water mark rarely touched since.},{

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Fargo

Noah Hawley took a beloved film and spun it into an anthology where Billy Bob Thornton's Lorne Malvo slithers into a Minnesota insurance salesman's life like the devil himself, proving the Coen Brothers' tone — dark comedy collapsing into brutal violence — could sustain a whole series. Each season reinvents its cast and decade while keeping that snowbound, folksy dread intact. It earns its place by never coasting on the movie's name, building its own crime mythology instead.},{

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 12 rankings

Ozark

Marty Byrde's frantic, sweat-drenched pitch to Missouri drug lords to launder millions through a lake resort kicked off a family's slide from suburban normalcy into cartel entanglement, with Ruth Langmore emerging as the show's fiercest surprise. Its Ozarks setting swapped Breaking Bad's desert for humid, waterlogged menace, proving the crime-family-on-the-run formula still had new terrain to explore. It earns its spot for Laura Linney and Julia Garner turning morally bankrupt survival into riveting television.},{

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.5/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Mindhunter

Holden Ford sitting across from real serial killers like Ed Kemper, absorbing their casual, chilling logic, turned criminal profiling's origin story into a masterclass in tension without violence on screen. Its meticulous recreation of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit made empathy itself feel like a dangerous tool. Cancelled before its time, it still reshaped how true-crime procedurals approach the psychology behind the act.},{

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 2IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

The Shield

Vic Mackey beating a confession out of a suspect in the pilot's opening minutes, then executing his own partner before the episode ends, announced a new kind of TV cop — corrupt, magnetic, unrepentant. It ran seven seasons on pure moral rot without ever softening Mackey into redemption, ending with him trapped in a cubicle as true punishment. It deserves recognition as the show that made premium-cable antiheroes possible on basic cable first.},{

Premiered: 2002Seasons: 7IMDb: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Narcos▼ Falling

Wagner Moura's Pablo Escobar, watching Bogotá's chaos from a rooftop as his empire both grows and rots, gave crime TV a documentary-style ambition rarely attempted before — real archival footage stitched into fiction. Its shift in later seasons to the Cali Cartel and DEA maneuvering showed how the drug war just mutates rather than ends. It matters for globalizing the crime narrative, taking it out of American cities and into the machinery of an entire hemisphere.},{

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 3IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Law & Order: SVU▼ Falling

Olivia Benson's two-plus decades chasing predators through New York City turned a procedural spin-off into the longest-running live-action primetime series in U.S. history, its 'ripped from the headlines' cases tackling sexual assault and abuse when few other shows dared. Its formulaic structure became comfort-food television, but that consistency built a cultural institution. It's on this list not for innovation but sheer, staggering endurance and cultural saturation.

Premiered: 1999Seasons: 26IMDb: 8.1/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Making a Murderer

Steven Avery's second wrongful-conviction nightmare, laid out through Netflix's exhaustive documentary lens, ignited a genuine movement questioning Wisconsin law enforcement and made true crime a national obsession again. Brendan Dassey's coerced, agonizing confession became Exhibit A in arguments about interrogation abuse. It belongs here for proving real-life crime documentary could move audiences — and possibly courts — as powerfully as any scripted drama.},{

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 2IMDb: 8.5/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Peaky Blinders▼ Falling

Tommy Shelby striding through Birmingham's smoke in a flat cap and tailored coat, backed by Nick Cave's snarling soundtrack, turned a post-WWI gangster family into style icons and folk legends. Its operatic violence and class-war undertones gave British crime drama a swagger it hadn't had in decades. The Shelbys' rise from razor gang to political players earns them a spot for sheer audacious mythmaking.},{

Premiered: 2013Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Money Heist▼ Falling

The Professor's crew, masked in Dalí grins and red jumpsuits, turned the Royal Mint of Spain heist into a global phenomenon, with 'Bella Ciao' becoming an anthem for resistance far beyond the show itself. Its soap-opera intensity and constant double-crosses made a slow-burn European heist drama into Netflix's most-watched non-English series ever. It earns its place for proving crime television's appeal is truly borderless.},{

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.2/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings