6 Best Thriller TV Shows Released Since 2020

Image via HBO Published Aug 15, 2026, 12:21 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Thriller might be the single most oversaturated genre on television right now, and there's a simple reason for that. It works. No other genre is built quite so perfectly for the streaming era, where every platform is fighting for your attention. A thriller has one job, and that's to keep the hook in your mouth from the cold open to the credits, episode after episode, until you've somehow burned through an entire season in a weekend without meaning to. The problem is that for every Ozark or Dark, there are plenty of forgettable shows that rely on twists that come out of nowhere and go miserably off the rails by the end. So, we looked back at every major thriller series released since 2020 and narrowed the list down to the very best. These are the thriller shows that truly deserve your time. 6 'The Day of the Jackal' (2024-) Image via Peacock This is a procedural cat-and-mouse story executed with such precision that it makes most modern action movies look lazy by comparison. Eddie Redmayne plays the Jackal, an assassin who travels the globe picking off targets in elaborate set pieces that genuinely rival big-budget blockbusters. The show spends a lot of time showing you every meticulous detail of the assassination process. You watch the Jackal physically become other people, prosthetics applied in real time, speech patterns rehearsed until they're flawless. And unlike Mission: Impossible, where the mask usually means another actor is taking over, it is actually Redmayne underneath the disguise the entire time, and it's mesmerizing to watch. Similarly, you see him build his sniper rifle piece by piece, set up a fan to measure wind conditions, and fire trial shots just to gauge bullet drop before he ever takes the real one. It feels like a HITMAN game brought to life, but the show smartly refuses to let the Jackal stay a one-note killing machine. By the end of that first episode, you learn he's also living a double life as a family man whose wife and daughter have no idea who he really is. As MI6 begins closing in, his two lives slowly start crashing into each other, and the stakes keep getting higher with every episode. 5 'Severance' (2022-) Image via Apple TV Severance feels like a top-tier Black Mirror episode turned into a full-length series, but it never runs out of ideas. The core hook is that Lumon Industries offers its employees a procedure that splits their consciousness in two. The "outie" lives a normal life and remembers nothing about work. The "innie" exists only inside Lumon's windowless basement, with no memory of anything outside it and no idea who their outer half even is. And that is where the show's brilliant mystery begins. What exactly are they doing on the severed floor? Why are the numbers scary? What do the data file names mean? And seriously, what is going on with the baby goats? It's become one of the most meticulously constructed mystery boxes on television, where every strange detail feels like it is hiding something much bigger. In many ways, it feels like Lost, but you actually get the answers, and it never feels like the writers are making things up as they go. Every reveal feels like a natural extension of what came before, and Ben Stiller has confirmed that he knows how the series ends, so when you sit down to watch this show, you know you're in good hands. 4 'Task' (2025-) Image via HBO From Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby, Task follows Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), an FBI agent who’s pulled off desk duty to lead a task force investigating a string of violent home invasions all done by the same crew. On the other side of the case is Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey), a sanitation worker moonlighting as the crew's leader, robbing drug houses to dig his family out of debt. The series starts as a fairly standard cat-and-mouse story, but then one of Robbie's robberies goes sideways, and the crew ends up taking custody of a kid who was never supposed to be part of any of this. Everyone is so insanely likable in this show, on both sides of the law. You're rooting for the task force because you genuinely love these characters, but you end up rooting just as hard for the people they're chasing, and that cognitive dissonance is what gives the show its teeth. It also refuses to play it safe. Characters you love, even the ones you're sure are protected by plot armor, can and do get killed off. That willingness to follow through on real consequences is what makes Task one of the best crime dramas to come out in years. Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz Which Taylor SheridanShow Do You Belong In? Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn't write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for. 🤠Yellowstone 🛢️Landman 👑Tulsa King ⚖️Mayor of Kingstown FIND YOUR WORLD → 01 Where does your power come from? In Sheridan's world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind. ALand, legacy, and a name that's been feared and respected for generations. BKnowing the deal better than anyone else in the room — and being willing to walk away first. CReputation. I've earned it the hard way, and everyone in the room knows it. DBeing the only person both sides will talk to. That makes me indispensable — and dangerous. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan's universe is always absolute — and always costly. AFamily — blood or chosen. The ranch, the name, the people who carry it with me. BThe company — or whoever's signing the cheques. Loyalty follows the contract. CMy crew. The men who stood with me when it counted — I don't abandon them for anything. DMy community — even when my community is a powder keg and I'm the only thing stopping it from blowing. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it's crossed. AQuietly, decisively, and in a way that sends a message to everyone watching. BI outmanoeuvre them legally, financially, and politically before they even know I've moved. CDirectly. Old school. You cross me, you hear about it to your face — and then you deal with the consequences. DI absorb it, calculate the fallout, and find the move that keeps the whole system from collapsing. NEXT QUESTION → 04 Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan's worlds are as much about place as they are about people. AWide open land — mountains, sky, silence. Somewhere you can see trouble coming from a mile away. BThe oil fields of West Texas — brutal, lucrative, and indifferent to whoever happens to be standing on top of them. CA mid-size city where the rules haven't quite caught up yet — fertile ground for someone with vision and nerve. DA rust-belt town built around a prison — where everyone's life is shaped by what's inside those walls. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt. AI do what has to be done to protect what's mine. I'll answer for it eventually — but not today. BGrey is just business. The line moves depending on what's at stake, and I move with it. CI have a code — it's not the law's code, but it's mine, and I don't break it. DI've made peace with it. Keeping the peace requires compromises most people don't have the stomach for. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they're defending. AA way of life that the modern world is doing everything it can to erase. BMy position — and the leverage that comes with being the person everyone needs to close a deal. CRelevance. I've been away, I've been written off — and I'm proving that was a mistake. DWhatever fragile order I've managed to build — because without it, everything burns. NEXT QUESTION → 07 How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan's world is never given — it's established, maintained, and constantly tested. ABy example and force of will. People follow me because they believe in what I'm protecting — and because they know what happens if they don't. BThrough negotiation and leverage. I don't need people to like me — I need them to need me. CBy being the smartest, most experienced person in the room and making sure everyone quietly knows it. DBy being the calm centre of a situation that would spiral without me — and accepting that nobody thanks you for it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you. AThey'll learn. Or they won't. Either way, the land was here before them and it'll be here after. BI figure out what they want, what they're worth, and whether they're an asset or a problem — fast. CI was the outsider once. I give them a chance — one — to show they understand respect. DNew players destabilise everything I've built. I assess the threat and manage it before it manages me. NEXT QUESTION → 09 What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal. AMy family's peace — maybe their innocence. The ranch demands everything, and I've let it take too much. BRelationships, time, any version of a normal life. The job eats everything that isn't nailed down. CYears. Decades in some cases. Time I can't get back — but I'm not done yet. DMy conscience, mostly. And the ability to ever fully trust anyone on either side of the wall. NEXT QUESTION → 10 When it's over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan's characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind. AThat I held the line. That the land is still ours and everything I did was worth it. BThat I was the best at what I did and that no deal ever got closed without me at the table. CThat I built something real, somewhere nobody expected it, and I did it on my own terms. DThat I kept the peace when nobody else could — and that the town is still standing because of it. REVEAL MY SHOW → Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you're complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes. 🤠 Yellowstone 🛢️ Landman 👑 Tulsa King ⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world's indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you're willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family's weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what's yours, you don't escalate — you finish it. You're not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone's world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn't make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it. You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You're a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they'll do to get it. You're not naive enough to think this world is fair. You're smart enough to be the one deciding who it's fair to. You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you're not above reminding people that the two aren't mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they'd be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they're more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don't need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land. You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you're the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky's world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You've made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 'Squid Game' (2021-2025) Image via Netflix Few shows in recent memory have had a premise this instantly gripping. Hundreds of desperate people compete in twisted versions of childhood games for a life-changing cash prize. But then the first game begins, Red Light, Green Light, and the players who move after the stop signal are suddenly gunned down. That is the moment you realize the real catch: losing means instant death, and there can only be one winner. The sets look great. Everyone in the cast brings their A-game. The world-building around the games, the guards, and the mysterious VIPs pulling the strings gives the whole thing a sense of scale that goes far beyond a simple survival contest. And it’s so fascinating to see how the games bring out the absolute worst in human nature. People lie, betray each other, form alliances, and turn on their friends the moment survival is on the line. And you constantly find yourself wondering what you would do in the same situation. Would you trust someone? Would you betray them first? How would you actually play these games if losing meant dying? 2 'Paradise' (2025-) Image via Hulu Paradise opens as a fairly grounded murder mystery. Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) wakes up to find former President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) dead, and because he was the last person to see the President alive, he quickly becomes the prime suspect. Then, right as you think you've got the show figured out, it pulls off a genre-shifting plot twist that recontextualizes everything you just watched and turns Paradise into a very different kind of show. If you’ve seen Parasite, you know how the story completely changes once the hidden basement comes into play. Paradise does something similar, but on a much, much grander scale. Honestly, it might just be the single greatest reveal television has pulled off in recent memory. Season 2 then doubles down on the ambition and expands into a full-blown, high-concept sci-fi epic involving supercomputers and alternate timelines, but it never once loses sight of the emotional human drama that made the first season work in the first place. 1 'The Last of Us' (2023-) Image via HBO Adapted from one of the greatest stories ever told in gaming, The Last of Us is easily the best zombie series ever made for television. The series takes place 20 years after a Cordyceps fungal outbreak wiped out most of civilization. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened smuggler still carrying the grief of losing his daughter on the first night of the outbreak, is hired to escort 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country. What begins as a simple cargo job turns into a brutal, continent-spanning odyssey through a country where the infected are terrifying, but the surviving humans are often worse. The show faithfully adapts the game's biggest moments while expanding on storylines that were barely more than easter eggs in the original. The Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) episode especially stands as one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking hours of television the genre has ever produced. If you've never played the games and somehow avoided the discourse around the sequel, be warned, because no one is safe here. The series keeps taking massive emotional swings and breaking your heart over and over again, and with Season 3 reportedly set to adapt some of the game's most divisive material, it's shaping up to be the biggest swing yet.