The 10 Best Crime Shows Released Since 1990, Ranked

Image via AMC Published Oct 9, 2026, 3:08 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Crime stories have always worked well on television because they give the audience an immediate question that needs answering. Somewhere around the 1990s, though, the genre became much more interested in going beyond just that. This was the era when crime shows became darker, messier, and increasingly interested in exploring morally grey concepts, including corrupt detectives, understandable criminals, and mysteries that exposed problems much bigger than a single arrest. That shift opened up countless new directions for crime TV, from intimate character dramas to family tragedies and even psychological thrillers. Here is a list of the 10 best crime shows released since 1990 that prove just how much can be done with one good mystery. 10 'The Shield' (2002–2008) Image via FX The Shield perfectly sets up its stakes in the very first episode. The series follows Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), the leader of an experimental LAPD Strike Team in the fictional Farmington district of Los Angeles. Vic and his men are extremely good at getting criminals off the streets, but they also steal money, plant evidence, beat suspects, and routinely ignore the law in the name of the greater good. That’s not it, though, because in the pilot, the audience sees Vic murder fellow detective Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond) after discovering that he has been placed on the team to investigate him. From that moment forward, there is no pretending that the protagonist is just a tough cop bending a few rules. That single decision gives The Shield seven seasons of consequences to work with, where every victory comes with a cost. Through its premise, the series explores how corruption spreads, not just through one man, but through everyone who benefits from staying close to him. No plot ever feels disposable because the show ensures that Vic and his team keep dealing with the choices they make, even if they happened seasons earlier. More importantly, The Shield refuses to make any of this comfortably black and white. Vic can be effective, loyal, and even sympathetic in one moment, then completely horrifying in the next. That moral gray area is deliberately uncomfortable, because the show is less interested in telling the audience who the good guys are than forcing them to sit with what happens when results start mattering more than the rules. 9 'Mindhunter' (2017–2019) Image via Netflix Mindhunter feels almost nothing like a conventional crime show, and that is exactly why it became such an important one. The series, set in the 1970s, follows FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) as they begin interviewing imprisoned murderers to understand why people commit seemingly inexplicable crimes. Psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) eventually joins them to turn those disturbing conversations into a system for identifying patterns in criminal behavior. Instead of spending every episode chasing a new killer, much of Mindhunter simply puts its characters in a room with fictional versions of real-life serial killers, including Ed Kemper and Richard Speck, to hear why and how they committed their gruesome crimes. In theory, the show does not sound as suspenseful as a traditional crime thriller. In fact, the audience always knows how a story is going to end, but the conversation that leads to it is the show’s main weapon. Every pause, uncomfortable question, and casual confession gives Holden and Bill another piece of a language that law enforcement is still learning how to use. Even when their research helps with active cases, the real breakthrough is watching them slowly realize that violent criminals can be studied rather than dismissed as monsters who simply cannot be understood. The show stripped away most of the genre’s familiar beats and proved they were never essential in the first place. The killers are often already behind bars, so the tension comes from understanding them rather than catching them, and David Fincher’s direction only makes that restraint more effective. 8 'Broadchurch' (2013–2017) Image via ITV Broadchurch deserves to be remembered as a crime classic. The show begins with the body of 11-year-old Danny Latimer being found on a beach in a quiet Dorset town. DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) is brought in to lead the investigation alongside local detective Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman), but the two approach the case from completely different positions. Hardy is an outsider who assumes anyone could be guilty, while Miller has spent years living among the same people she is now supposed to investigate. As the two investigate Danny’s family, friends, and neighbors, they uncover enough secrets to realize that almost everyone in town has something to hide. Broadchurch might sound like a traditional whodunit, but it’s much more than just that. The series understands how a crime like this can completely change an entire town. Every new suspect calls friendships, marriages, and families into question, while the growing media attention turns Danny’s family’s private grief into a circus for the entire country to watch. Broadchurch explores its mystery with a lot of emotional weight. The show can spend long stretches away from clues and interrogations without ever losing momentum because it builds its narrative around what the investigation is doing to its characters involved, not just where it’s leading. 7 'Dept. Q' (2025–Present) Image via Netflix Dept. Q is one of the greatest crime shows of recent times, and it has just gotten started. The series follows DCI Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), who is at the lowest point of his career after a shooting leaves one officer dead and his partner paralyzed. Carl returns to work carrying plenty of guilt and even less patience for the people around him. His superiors respond by putting him in charge of Department Q, a new cold-case unit buried in the basement and created mostly as a PR stunt. Carl barely wants the made-up job, but that changes when he begins looking into the disappearance of prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who vanished from a ferry years earlier. What everyone else believes to be a dead end starts producing enough inconsistencies to convince Carl and his new assistant, Akram (Alexej Manvelov), that Merritt may never have fallen overboard at all. On the other hand, the audience learns that the prosecutor is in fact alive and being held captive somewhere. From there, the mystery operates in two directions as the audience patiently waits for both sides to finally meet in the middle. The investigation is gripping because the audience is in on this secret, while Carl has no idea whether he is looking for a missing person or a body. The case gives the detective purpose just when he thought he would never find it again, which gives weight to every breakthrough. That balance between suspense and heart is what makes Dept. Q feels so satisfying. The cold case keeps tightening, but the real progress is watching a department created to hide unwanted people become the one place where all of them start proving their worth. 6 'Adolescence' (2025) Image via Netflix Adolescence is easily one of the most haunting crime series of all time, and the fact that it manages to tell such a compelling story in just four episodes is a testament to its brilliance. The show opens with the police storming the home of 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) and arresting him for murdering his classmate Katie. His father, Eddie (Stephen Graham), is convinced there must be some terrible mistake, and Jamie repeatedly insists that he has done nothing wrong. However, by the end of the first episode, the audience learns the horrible truth that the police had evidence of Jamie’s carrying out the horrible attack all along. From there, the show shifts from a whodunit to an exploration of why a young boy would do something so heinous in the first place. The following episodes follow Jamie’s friends and classmates, his sessions with psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), and his family’s life after the arrest. There is no killer to catch here. Instead, the show examines how bullying, warped ideas of masculinity, and social media shaped Jamie, and the fact that all of it feels entirely plausible is what makes Adolescence so much more unsettling than a normal murder mystery. Even the decision to film every episode in one continuous take serves that idea, because there is never a convenient cut away from this suffocating ordeal. It makes the story feel frighteningly real, almost like the audience is watching something that could already be happening behind closed doors in any ordinary family. Collider Exclusive · Villain Personality Quiz Which Criminal Mastermind Would Be Your Nemesis? Lecter · Joker · Moriarty · Chigurh Four of the finest criminal minds ever put on screen. One of them would look at you and see something worth their time. Eight questions decide which one comes for you, why they picked you, and what they would want when they arrived. 🍷Lecter 🃏Joker ♟️Moriarty 🪙Chigurh MEET YOUR NEMESIS → 01 What would a criminal mastermind notice about you first? Great villains choose their opponents carefully. Something about you got their attention. AMy manners, and everything I am careful not to say. BThat I still believe people are basically decent. CThat I am clever, and quietly enjoy proving it. DThat I handle things myself, and always have. NEXT QUESTION → 02 How do they make first contact? The introduction tells you everything about what is coming next. AA polite letter. Beautiful handwriting. Quietly wrong. BSomething on fire, with a message left beside it. CA puzzle, left where only I would look. DNo contact. Just the aftermath, and a coin. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you actually believe about right and wrong? Every nemesis is really an argument about the thing you believe most. AThere are lines. Mine are private and absolute. BRules are the only thing keeping us from being animals. CMorality is a system, and systems can be solved. DThings happen. Most of it was never up to me. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What finally gets under your skin? Everybody has a pressure point. Finding yours is the whole plan. ABeing seen clearly by somebody I cannot read. BWatching good people do something ugly. CLosing to someone who was simply better prepared. DHaving no move left that changes anything. NEXT QUESTION → 05 They have made their move. How do you fight back? This is the part of the film where the audience finds out who you are. ACarefully, and never where they expect to be touched. BLoudly. I would rather lose than play their game. CWith a better plan. I can out-think this. DDirectly, once, with whatever is closest to hand. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What would they use against you? A good villain never brings a weapon you have not already handed them. AMy privacy. I have kept far too much to myself. BMy conscience. I will not cross the line they want. CMy ego. I cannot resist a worthy opponent. DMy certainty that I can handle it alone. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do they actually want from you? The money is never the point. Something else always is. ATo understand me better than anyone ever has. BTo prove I am no better than they are. CTo finally be beaten by someone worth the trouble. DNothing at all. I stepped into the wrong path. NEXT QUESTION → 08 How does it end between the two of you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who comes for you. AA conversation I will be replaying for years. BA choice forced on me that has no clean answer. COne final move, and the better mind wins. DA coin in the air, and nothing I can say. REVEAL MY NEMESIS → The Case File Is Complete Your Nemesis Is…Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours. Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from the encounter. Hannibal LecterYour nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the conversation is. Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He never raises his voice, because he has never needed to. You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve is exactly the door he would knock on. The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence. It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person. He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part. The JokerYour nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on. The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence against him. It is the entire reason he showed up. He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool you would normally reach for. His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend the rest of your life proving him wrong. He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life. MoriartyYour nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time. Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from: a mind the equal of the hero's, pointed the wrong way. You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he has already built the room. This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs the game to be worth playing. It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down. Anton ChigurhYour nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way. Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the answer was decided long before you opened your mouth. You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no interest in how capable you are. No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work. Call it. He will wait. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Fargo' (2014–2024) Image via FX Fargo takes the world of the Coen brothers’ 1996 film and turns it into an anthology where every season tells a completely different crime story. The first installment follows mild-mannered insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman), whose chance encounter with mysterious drifter Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) pushes him toward a decision that completely destroys his ordinary life. Meanwhile, deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) begins piecing together what actually happened, even as almost everyone around her underestimates both Lester and the danger surrounding him. Later seasons move to different decades, families, and crimes, but they all exist inside the same strange moral universe. That anthology format is exactly what makes Fargo work. The show can completely replace its cast and storyline without losing its identity because its real subject has always been what happens when ordinary people make one terrible choice and then keep making worse ones to cover it up. What’s really fascinating, though, is how the criminals are rarely the only interesting people in the room. Fargo gives just as much weight to the more normal characters who keep pushing toward the truth even when doing the right thing seems hopelessly naive. The show is a brilliant balancing act between absurdity and the genuine good in people. It constantly reinvents almost everything about itself but still feels consistent, and that is no small feat. 4 'Better Call Saul' (2015–2022) Image via AMC Better Call Saul takes a character audiences already know but in a completely different light. The show is set years before the events of Breaking Bad, and introduces Saul Goodman as Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), a struggling Albuquerque lawyer who is still desperately trying to prove that he can build an honest career. That becomes much harder because of his complicated relationship with his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean), a respected lawyer who never believes Jimmy has left his conman instincts behind. At the same time, Jimmy’s relationship with fellow lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) gives him someone who sees both the good in him and, eventually, the thrill he gets from bending the rules. Running parallel to all of this is Mike Ehrmantraut’s (Jonathan Banks) gradual descent into Albuquerque’s criminal world, which slowly brings the legal and cartel sides of the story closer together. Now, since the audience already knows Saul Goodman, they know exactly where Jimmy is going to end up. The tension comes from watching the tiny decisions that lead to that point. The way Jimmy starts using his Saul persona to avoid dealing with everything he has lost grounds his transformation into something more than just pure chaos. Nothing in the show happens without leaving some kind of emotional or moral scar behind. By the end, the series turns a character who once felt like comic relief into one of television’s most tragic examples of how easy it is to become the person everyone always expected Saul to be, even when he tried his best to change that. 3 'Breaking Bad' (2008–2013) Image via AMC No list of the best crime shows is ever complete without Breaking Bad. The show begins with high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) finding out that he has cancer and deciding to use his scientific knowledge to cook meth with former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). At first, Walter claims he is only doing it to leave money behind for his family, but that excuse becomes harder to believe as he gets deeper into Albuquerque’s criminal world. Walt’s choices eventually bring him into conflict with drug distributors, cartel figures, and people far more dangerous than he ever expected to meet. However, the most interesting part is how much he starts to enjoy it all. Walter is given multiple opportunities to stop, but every time he survives one disaster, he becomes more convinced that he deserves his newfound power. On the other hand, Jesse moves in the opposite direction, almost scared of the consequences of his and Walter’s actions. That contrast gives the show most of its tension. More importantly, Breaking Bad has an almost ruthless sense of cause and effect. Small decisions made seasons earlier return with enormous consequences, so the story never feels like it is inventing trouble as it goes. By the final season, Walter’s downfall feels less like a twist than the inevitable result of all of his choices, and that kind of intentional storytelling remains evergreen. 2 'The Sopranos' (1999–2007) Image via HBO The Sopranos is another classic that redefined the crime genre by giving the world a morally complicated antihero who was both despicable and surprisingly easy to root for. The show follows New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as he tries to manage his equally stressful professional and personal lives. Tony starts seeing psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) after he begins experiencing regular panic attacks that disrupt his carefully controlled image. That decision immediately gives the series an unusual perspective into the mob world. Instead of just watching Tony threaten rivals, order violence, and settle disputes, the audience also watches him sit in a quiet office and try to explain why none of it makes him happy. That contradiction is what makes The Sopranos so much richer than a conventional gangster story. Tony can be frightening, funny, vulnerable, and selfish at the same time without the show ever pretending those qualities cancel each other out. Therapy gives him the language to understand himself, but understanding his behavior does not automatically make him willing to change it. That is why the criminal plots never feel separate from the character drama. Every power struggle, betrayal, and family argument reveals another part of the same world Tony has built for himself. The Sopranos thrives on its uncomfortable honesty, but that is also why it has gone down in history as the greatest crime dramas of modern television. 1 'The Wire' (2002–2008) Image via HBO The Wire made an entire city its main character, and that gave the show an identity that remains unique even today. The story begins with Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) pushing his department to investigate the Barksdale drug organization, led by Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and his much more business-minded partner Stringer Bell (Idris Elba). Police surveillance slowly gives them a window into how the organization works, but the show spends just as much time with the people being investigated as the detectives. Drug dealers, addicts, officers, informants, and neighborhood kids all become fully realized characters rather than pieces of a standard police procedural. However, The Wire just keeps pulling the camera further back. Later seasons move through Baltimore’s struggling docks, city politics, public schools, and eventually the local newspaper to show how each institution eventually spills into the other. The most realistic thing about the show is how it never presents crime as a problem that disappears when the police arrest someone. It actually takes the audience through the very bureaucratic process of solving crime and refuses to divide its world neatly between criminals and seemingly respectable people. The show unfolds with an ambition that is hard to contain, but that scale never comes at the expense of its character. Every season adds another layer to Baltimore without making the previous one feel less important, until the audience realizes that The Wire was always about the systems that allow the same problems to survive long after individual criminals, cops, and politicians are gone. The Wire Release Date 2002 - 2008-00-00 Network HBO