10 Best Crime-Drama Shows of All Time, Ranked

Many great crime series serve as a piercing look at the inner workings of law enforcement. Others excel as gripping and morally complex explorations of criminals and the world they inhabit. The Wire expertly delivers on both those ideas. Created by Baltimore crime reporter David Simon, its five-season run is a consistently expanding and painfully realistic immersion into the hierarchy of the drug trade and the disorder and corruption within the city’s police force, one always invested in examining the failings of Baltimore’s societal institutions and the terrible impact their ineptitude has on the city’s most desperate and vulnerable people.

The series’ sense of realism is unrivaled, creating an air of overwhelming dramatic urgency that is just as palpable now as it was when the series started in 2002. Its city-spanning narrative of crime, corruption, power, and tragedy is anchored in this brutal authenticity—conjured by documentary-style cinematography—but also in its engrossing and nuanced performances. While The Wire wasn’t a huge hit when it aired, it has since come to be celebrated as one of the defining achievements of 2000s television. Its confronting drama, epic scope, and piercing timelessness all conspire to make The Wire not only the best crime series ever made, but the greatest television show of all time as well.

While gangster stories had been presented on the small screen before, The Sopranos completely revolutionized the genre on the format, standing as one of the most influential series in television history and a defining pioneer of TV drama as audiences know it today. It follows New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), who, suffering from anxiety attacks as he struggles to maintain a balance between his violent work and his family life, starts seeing a psychiatrist hoping to find some stability in his life.

It is an authentic immersion in the world of modern-day organized crime as well as a compelling exploration of morality and righteousness in such a landscape, but what The Sopranos truly excels at is being a character study of Tony Soprano, a richly complex and often contradictory man caught between traditionalism and progress as he finds himself taking charge of a mafia faction at a time when the criminal syndicate is at a state of decline. With its array of stunning performances and its ceaselessly brilliant writing, The Sopranos stands as a touchstone moment in television history, a masterpiece of serialized drama, and one of the greatest triumphs the medium has ever seen.

​​​​​​​Viewed by many as being the defining masterpiece of television drama, Breaking Bad is an absorbing descent into the world of the drug trade, analyzed through the complete moral deterioration of its complex and compelling anti-hero, Walter White (Bryan Cranston). Starting as a high school teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer, his initial drive to cook crystal meth to provide some money for his family is admirable, but his transformation from a meek and good-intentioned man to a ruthless drug lord speaks to the corruptive nature of power.

Realized with sublime performances and outstanding plotting, Breaking Bad is a feat of sustained tension and bold character development that is often as richly enthralling as it is bleak and confronting. It knows when to plunge viewers into the grounded realism of drug-related crime and when to emphasize its stylistic flourishes for impact, conjuring an addictive viewing experience that is astonishing from its pilot episode’s captivating cold open right through to the perfect final moments of the series finale.

Typically surreal and cerebral from David Lynch, Twin Peaks isn’t just an exceptional crime series, but a timeless new horizon for television entertainment, a bold and brazen pushing of the envelope that redefined what the medium could achieve and paved the way for many of the most eccentric and daring series that have come over the past 35 years. It famously follows FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlin) as he travels to the quaint Californian town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of local 17-year-old, Laura Palmer.

Imbuing its central crime mystery storyline with plenty of surrealist suspense, inflections of horror, and even outbursts of dark comedy, Twin Peaks continues to stand as one of the most outlandishly engulfing series, some 35 years after it premiered. As evinced by the success of the 2017 legacy sequel series Twin Peaks: The Return, the iconic television title has endured as a landmark triumph of the medium, one that has found millions of new fans with each passing generation, and one that is still regarded as being one of the most marvelously unique crime series of all time.

A perfect example of a spin-off series done well that not only adds increased depth to the story world of its parent series, but conjures up its own sense of suspense and drama as well. Better Call Saul marks another defining gem of small-screen entertainment over the past decade. It follows Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), who starts the series as a sly conman-turned-low-level attorney using his underhanded tactics to get the best rulings for his clients. Over the course of the show’s six-season run, McGill finds himself embroiled with the cartel and embodying his Saul Goodman persona more often.

Like Breaking Bad, the series is phenomenal at combining rich character drama with enrapturing style, allowing the cinematic imagery and impressionable use of music to complement the themes and narrative rather than overpower them. Also buoyed by a plethora of outstanding performances, Better Call Saul thrives as a true masterpiece of crime television, an entertaining and enlightening examination of crime and corruption that remains consistently brilliant throughout the entirety of its run.

Marking the pinnacle of Netflix’s collection of original TV shows that combines the extended narrative scope of television with rich cinematic visuals and a chilling emphasis on the psyche of the most deranged criminals, Mindhunter is a masterpiece of modern television and one of the greatest shows of the past decade of any genre. Examining the beginning of criminal profiling in the FBI, it follows two agents and a psychologist as they travel around 1970s America interviewing detained serial killers to gain insights into their motives, mindsets, and past lives, hoping it can aid in active murder investigations.

As haunting as it is mesmerizing, the series enthralls with its taut writing and its litany of exemplary performances, offering an intellectual descent into criminal psychology that prioritizes simmering tension and cerebral depth over graphic gore. Sadly, despite pleas from fans the world over, Mindhunter came to a close with just its second season, leaving crime TV lovers with 19 masterful episodes of intrigue and suspense that are considered by many to be the greatest show of the streaming era thus far.

The 2000s were truly a golden age of crime drama television, an era of daring storytelling that boldly explored issues in the law enforcement system like corruption and the abuse of power with tremendous might. One of the best and most confronting of these series was FX’s The Shield, following an LAPD police unit known as the Strike Team as they use illegal and unethical methods to enforce the law in their crime-riddled district. Under the command of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), the force also finds ways to profit from the gangland violence they fight.

From its truly shocking pilot episode right through to the catharsis and consequence of its finale, The Shield excels as a gripping drama invested in the exploration of morality and immunity in the police force, one largely inspired by the real-life LAPD Rampart scandal. Relentlessly suspenseful and courageous in its endeavor to examine corruption while also treating each of its leads as complex characters of depth and nuance, The Shield is one of the greatest police dramas ever made and stands as a defining triumph of crime television in the 21st century.

The oldest series to appear on this list, Hill Street Blues, is in many ways the great pioneer of hard-boiled cop drama as audiences know it today. Released in an era where flamboyance and panache dominated the genre through titles like Miami Vice and Magnum P.I., Hill Street Blues found its allure in its grounded and gritty realism. Following the lives of the cops and staff of an inner-city police station, it places its emphasis more on the characters than the cases.

Its endeavor to go against the grain of its time imbued it with the ability to analyze such thematic issues as corruption, alcoholism, racism in the force, and the failings of both people and institutions. Through its featuring of an ensemble cast and overlapping, serialized stories, as well as its use of handheld cameras and an almost documentary-style portrayal of police work, Hill Street Blues also proved to be a great innovator, implementing techniques and ideas that continue to define crime television today.

A spiritual precursor to so much that has come in crime television in the years since, Homicide: Life on the Street excels as a realistic deep dive into the true nature of police work. Based on Baltimore crime reporter David Simon’s nonfiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the series explores the lives and work of officers in the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit, supplanting the stylish excess and action allure of many contemporary crime shows with an emphasis on the tedious, emotionally draining, and often unresolved justice of real crime investigation.

This commitment to authenticity over glamour is particularly prevalent in the series’ first three seasons, but the whole show is a masterpiece of grounded police drama that challenges every preconceived notion of the genre, be it through its ambition to present more visceral suspense with its handheld cameras or its narrative focus on unfulfilling cases and the damning flaws of many of its core characters. It may lack some of the polish and panache of other crime dramas, and its thematic punch has been replicated and, arguably, improved in more recent series, but Homicide: Life on the Street is a pivotal title in the context of modern television, and its pioneering brilliance and daring grit have endured incredibly well over the past 30 years.

Decadently twisted, artfully grotesque, and rife with twists and turns aplenty, Hannibal is a supremely stylish spin on police procedural drama that uses its basis on the characters and stories of Thomas Harris—particularly “Red Dragon”—to deliver a masterful spectacle of addictive, macabre divinity. The series follows FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) as he assists the bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit. Disturbed by unresolved past trauma, Graham is supervised by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), who has his own dark fascination with Graham and what he can manipulate him to do.

Defined by its absorbing performances and its graphic and elaborate appetite for visual horror, Hannibal is a magnificent treat of morbid mystery suspense, a deeply sinister and savage showcase of human depravity realized with a hypnotizing eye for glamour and gore. Even with a hurried resolution being forced on it due to the crime show's abrupt cancellation after Season 3, Hannibal thrives as a complete and rewarding story, a devilish dive into obsession and death that revels in the sadistic allure of its story world, making for one of the more unique and impressionable crime shows.