50 Best Crime Shows Of All Time

I’ve been obsessed with Crime and True Crime shows for years now.

I have books, podcasts, audible downloads and of course, TV shows that I just binge watch/read to satisfy my morbid fascination with all things dark! If you too are a bit obsessed with crime, then you MUST watch these crime shows.  Some of them are even based on real life crimes!

1. Mindhunter

• Network: Netflix
• Release Date: October 2017
• Starring:  Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Hannah Gross, Anna Torv
• Overview: Set in the 1970’s, two FBI agents start interviewing serial killers that are in jail, to try and ‘profile’ what makes them think!  This is a new series to Netflix and it is awesome.

Why You’ll Love It:  If you are facinated by serial killers and what makes them tick, and how the FBI work – than this is for you!  The story is based on the character ‘Crawford’ from Silence of the Lambs.

Rating:  9.5/10

2. Happy Valley

• Network: BBC (also on Netflix Australia)
• Dates: Season 3 Due for Release in 2019
• Starring:  Sarah Lancashire, Sioban Finneran, Shane Zara
• Overview: Catherine Cawood is the sergeant on duty when flustered and nervous accountant Kevin Weatherill comes into her West Yorkshire station to report a crime.

1. Why You’ll Love It:  A typical great English Police drama.  The main character is a ballsy Police Sergeant with a Potty Mouth and a gut worth listening to!

• Rating: 9/10

3. The Killing

• Network: Netflix
• Dates: 2011-2014
• Seasons: 4
• Starring: Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman, Billy Campbell
• Overview: A police investigation, the saga of a grieving family, and a Seattle mayoral campaign all interlock after the body of 17-year-old Rosie Larsen is found in the trunk of a submerged car.

Why you’ll love it: So many twists and turns….  It will always keep you guessing.

Rating: 7.5/10

4. Ozark

Network: Netflix

• Dates: July 2017
• Starring: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Julia Garner
• Overview: A Chicago-based financial advisor secretly relocates his family to the Missouri Ozark when his dealings with a drug cartel go awry.

Why You’ll Love it:  Seeing a seemingly ‘normal’ family get in over their heads, the story rings true and the scenery is just amazing.

Rating: 8/10

5. Breaking Bad

• Network: Netflix
• Dates: 2008-2013, 5 Seasons
• Starring: Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul
• Overview: A high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer turns to manufacturing and selling methamphetamine in order to secure his family’s future.

Why You’ll Love it:  Seeing how a seemingly normal man can slowly turn into a drug lord in a believable manner… It is brilliant:

Rating: 10/10

6. The Wire

• Network: HBO
• Dates: 2002-2008, 5 Seasons
• Starring: Dominic West, Lance Reddick, Sonja Sohn
• Overview: Baltimore drug scene, seen through the eyes of drug dealers and law enforcement.

Why you’ll love it:  Seeing how the drug network works from the poorest areas of the United States, and the Police who try and fail to help them.

Rating: 9.5/10

7. Line of Duty

• Network: BBC
• Dates: 2012- Season 5 due for release in 2019
• Starring: Martin Compston, Vicky McLure, Adrian Dunbar
• Overview: DS Steve Arnott is transferred to the police anti-corruption unit after the death of a man in a mistaken shooting during a counter-terrorist operation.

Why you’ll love it:  She’s a bitch, did she do it?  No, she didn’t.  Yes, she did!  No, she didn’t… It just keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time!

Rating: 9/10

8. The Sopranos

• Network: HBO
• Dates: 1999-2007
• Starring: James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco
• Overview: New Jersey mob boss, Tony Soprano, deals with personal and professional issues in his home and business life, which affects his mental state and ends up seeking professional psychiatric counselling.

Why you’ll love it:  A likeable Mafia lord dealing with a troublesome mother, a money-hungry wife and his ‘family’ – Tony Soprano is the ultimate Anti-Hero.

Rating: 9/10

9. Dexter

• Network: Showtime
• Dates: 2006-2013, 8 Seasons
• Starring: Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, David Zayas
• Overview: By day, mild-mannered Dexter is a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But at night, he is a serial killer who only targets other murderers. The first three seasons are fantastic, then it gets a bit silly.

Why you’ll love it:  Seeing a serial killer who kills serial killers, and seeing him in his finest hour, how he tracks his prey, and goes about disposing of bodies…. and why!

Rating: First two seasons: 10/10

10. Making a Murderer

• Network: Netflix (True Crime Documentary)
• Dates: 2015-now, Season 2 release date unknown
• Starring: Steven Avery, Dolores Avery, Ken Kratz
• Overview: Filmed over a 10-year period, Steven Avery, a DNA exoneree who, while in the midst of exposing corruption in local law enforcement, finds himself the prime suspect in a grisly new crime. Viewers are taken inside a high-stakes criminal case where reputation is everything and things are never as they appear.

Why you’ll love it:  This is a real case… and it is ongoing.  See the facts and decide if he is guilty or innocent!

Rating:  8.5/10

11. Fargo

• Network: FX (Netflix Australia)
• Dates: 2014-2017, 3 Seasons so far!
• Starring:  Allison Tolman, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks
• Overview: Various chronicles of deception, intrigue, and murder in and around frozen Minnesota. Yet all of these tales mysteriously lead back one way or another to Fargo, ND.

Why you’ll love it:  If you loved the movie Fargo, you will adore this series… Martin Freeman is beyond amazing.

Rating:  8/10

12. The Fall

• Network: BBC and Netflix Australia
• Dates: 2014-2016, 3 Seasons
• Starring: Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan, John Lynch
• Overview: A seemingly cold but very passionate policewoman goes head to head with a seemingly passionate father who is in fact a cold serialist in this procedural out of Belfast. The only thing they share is their common complexity.

Why you’ll love it:  Jamie Dornan.  Need I say more!

Rating:  9/10

13. Luther

• Network: BBC and Netflix Australia
• Dates: 2010-now, Series 5 to be released in 2018
• Starring: Idris Elba, Warren Brown, Dermot Crowley
• Overview: A crime drama series starring Idris Elba as a near-genius murder detective whose brilliant mind can’t always save him from the dangerous violence of his passions.

Why you’ll love it:  It took me a few episodes to get into this, but once you are hooked, look out!

Rating:  9/10

14. Spotless

• Network: TC and SBS
• Dates: 2015-now, Season 2 to be released in 2017
• Starring: Marc-Andre Grondin, Miranda Raison, Denis Menochet
• Overview: Set in London, SPOTLESS is the story of a troubled crime scene cleaner, Jean, whose tidy life is turned upside down when his outlaw brother Martin crash lands into his world, entangling them in the deadly dynamics of organized crime.

Why you’ll love it:  This is just so different.  And seeing how a cleaner gets drawn into disposing of bodies for a hit man.

Rating: 7.5/10

15. Broadchurch

• Network: Netflix Australia
• Dates: 2013-now, 3 Seasons
• Starring:  David Tennant, Olivia Coleman, Jodie Whittaker
• Overview: The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.

Why you’ll love it:  All the best of the best of British actors are in this crime show that focuses on a small island down murder of a small boy.

Rating: 9/10

16. True Detective

• Network: HBO
• Dates: 2014- now, 2 seasons so far!
• Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson (S1) Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams (S2)
• Overview: Seasonal anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law.

Why you’ll love it:  Shot beautifully, and an amazing story.

Rating: 8/10

17. Forensic Files

• Network: Netflix Australia
• Dates: 1996-2011, 15 Seasons
• Starring:  Peter Thomas, Skip Palenik, Tom Bevel
• Overview: A series featuring detailed accounts on how notable crimes and diseases were solved through forensic science.

Why you’ll love it:  Real life stories of real crimes and how they solve them.

Rating: 8/10

18. Deadly Women

• Network: Discovery and Netflix Australia
• Dates: 2005-now, Season 11 to be released 2017
• Starring:  Lynanne Zager, Candice DeLong, Janis Amatuzio
• Overview: Deadly Wombone-chilling chilling storytelling, sumptuous period drama and forensic fact in a bid to explore history’s most alluring, intriguing and horrifying female killers.

Why you’ll love it:  Women can be deadly too, see reenacted true crimes of women who have poisoned, bludgeoned and stabbed!

Rating: 9/10

19. The Act

20. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

21. Perry Mason

22. Good Girls

23. Sons of Anarchy

24. The Honorable Woman

25. The Night Of

26. The People vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story

27. Mr Inbetween

28. Animal Kingdom

29. Bosch

30. Unbelieveable

31. Des

32. Your Honor

33. The Serpent

34. Marcella

35. Goliath

36. Dr Death

37. The Boys

38. The Blacklist

39. StartUP

40. Brooklyn Nine Nine

41. Better Call Saul

42. Money Heist

43. Why Women Kill

44. Unforgotten

45. The X-Files

46. Prison Break

47. Time

48. Queen of the South

49. Narco’s

50. Homeland

Got more to add?  Let us know!