The best crime TV shows 2026 ranked by the community. Crime is the broadest genre in television – from procedurals and noir to true crime and gangster stories. This ranking helps you filter out the series that genuinely hold up from the large pool of available titles. Use the filters to search specifically by streaming service, completed series or shorter runtime.
How are the series charts created?
Rankings are based on real user ratings. The more votes a show receives, the more stable its chart position. When you rate shows yourself, your personal recommendations improve too.
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Elliot, a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. Elliot finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the corporation. more
An F.B.I. agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.
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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, North Dakota. more
An ex-CIA agent and a mysterious billionaire prevent violent crimes with the help of an all-seeing machine that can predict events before they happen. more
Special Agents Jason Gideon and Aaron Hotchner head up the FBI's most elite profiling team, the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the experts in analyzing criminal psychology. With each mind-blowing case, they put their lives on the line as they travel the country, matching wits with the most ruthless ... more
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan and cocky F.B.I. Special Agent Seeley Booth build a team to investigate murders. Quite often, there isn't more to examine than rotten flesh or mere bones.
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Thanks to his police officer father's efforts, Shawn Spencer spent his childhood developing a keen eye for detail (and a lasting dislike of his dad). Years later, Shawn's frequent tips to the police lead to him being falsely accused of a crime he solved. Now, Shawn has no choice but to use his abi... more
After Portland homicide detective Nick Burkhardt discovers he's descended from an elite line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms," he increasingly finds his responsibilities as a detective at odds with his new responsibilities as a Grimm. more
Is the grass really greener on the other side? Yes, and it smells better, too! So when Nancy Botwin faces both sudden widowhood and poverty, she's determined to do anything to keep her kids in suburbia, including taking a job as the neighborhood pot dealer. more
Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse encounters a strange new supernatural world when she meets the mysterious Bill Compton, a southern Louisiana gentleman and vampire. more
An ex-cop suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder solves crimes with various (and usually exasperated) sidekicks. The 'defective detective' may have an abundance of phobias (heights, crowds, and even milk), but also razor-sharp deductive skills, which he uses to help the San Francisco police wi... more
New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano deals with personal and professional issues in his home and business life that affect his mental state, leading him to seek professional psychiatric counseling. more
Eccentric genius, Walter O'Brien and his team of brilliant misfits comprise the last line of defense against complex, high-tech threats of the modern age. As Homeland Security's new think tank, O'Brien's 'Scorpion' team includes Toby Curtis, an expert behaviorist who can read anyone; Happy Quinn, a ... more
"24" is a TV thriller presented in "real time" with each minute of airtime that corresponds to a minute in the lives of the characters. "24" employs fast-paced and complex stories, and often contains unexpected plot twists. Though each day's events typically revolve around thwarting an impending ter... more
Blinded as a young boy, Matt Murdock fights injustice by day as a lawyer and by night as the Super Hero Daredevil in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. more
A cynical researcher who's made a profession of interpreting facial expressions and body language to determine whether someone is telling the truth heads up a consulting firm that includes a perceptive, optimistic female clinical psychologist on whom he harbors a secret crush, a former TSA screener ... more
Crime is the broadest genre in television. The label covers procedurals with standalone cases per episode, serialised investigator stories across full seasons, true crime adaptations of real cases, gangster series, neo-noir productions and psychological perpetrator portraits – formats that differ fundamentally in pace, tone and perspective. What they share is crime as a central motif, but not necessarily its resolution.
The community ratings help filter out the series that work beyond their premise. Series that consistently rank near the top tend to share one quality: they show the crime from multiple perspectives at once – perpetrator, investigator, victim, system – and ask questions without easy answers. Use the runtime filter to find crime series with shorter episodes that are well suited for binge-watching.