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- 1True Detective
True Detective premiered on HBO in January 2014, created by Nic Pizzolatto, and its first season, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana detectives investigating a ritualistic murder across two intercut timelines, became an immediate critical sensation and a significant factor in McConaughey's broader career resurgence often nicknamed the "McConaissance." The season's six-minute unbroken tracking shot during a tense raid sequence in its fourth episode became one of the most widely discussed and analyzed single scenes in modern television, frequently cited by critics and filmmakers as a genuine technical achievement rarely attempted in episodic television production. True Detective adopted an anthology format, with each subsequent season telling an entirely new self-contained crime story with different characters and settings, a structure that let the show recruit different major film stars for each installment, including Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Mahershala Ali, and Jodie Foster across its various seasons. True Detective's combination of its acclaimed first season's technical filmmaking achievements and its anthology structure recruiting major film talent for each new story has made it one of the most influential prestige crime dramas of the modern television era.
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0 - 2Mindhunter
Mindhunter premiered on Netflix in October 2017, developed by Joe Penhall with David Fincher directing and executive producing multiple episodes, dramatizing the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit's pioneering research into criminal profiling through interviews with incarcerated serial killers during the late 1970s and early '80s. The series was based on the real 1996 book "Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit," co-written by former FBI agent John E. Douglas, whose real career directly inspired the show's lead character and whose actual research helped establish criminal profiling as a legitimate law enforcement discipline. Fincher's directorial involvement brought his characteristically meticulous, methodical visual style to the series, and the show's extended, tension-filled interview scenes with fictionalized versions of real serial killers, including Ed Kemper and Charles Manson, became particularly noted for their unusually restrained, dialogue-driven approach to depicting infamous real criminals. Mindhunter's combination of its grounding in real FBI criminal-profiling history and David Fincher's meticulous directorial approach has made it one of the most critically respected crime dramas of the streaming era, despite Netflix placing the series on indefinite hiatus after two seasons.
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0 - 3Narcos
Narcos premiered on Netflix in August 2015, created by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro, dramatizing the rise and fall of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and the broader Colombian and later Mexican cocaine trade across its multi-season run, blending scripted drama with documentary-style narration and archival footage. Brazilian actor Wagner Moura's performance as Escobar drew significant critical acclaim, and the show's decision to film substantially on location in Colombia, with extensive Spanish-language dialogue subtitled for English-speaking audiences, represented a genuinely different approach to how English-language streaming platforms had previously handled international crime stories. The series later shifted its narrative focus for its final two seasons, retitled "Narcos: Mexico," to the rise of the Mexican drug trade following Escobar's death, following real DEA agent Kiki Camarena's investigation into the Guadalajara Cartel, extending the franchise's exploration of the broader hemisphere-wide drug trade. Narcos's combination of its willingness to embrace substantial Spanish-language dialogue and Colombian location filming and its dramatization of real, historically significant drug-trade figures has made it one of the most internationally significant crime dramas produced for an American streaming platform.
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0 - 4Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul premiered on AMC in February 2015, created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould as a prequel spinoff to "Breaking Bad," following the transformation of small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill into the morally compromised criminal defense attorney Saul Goodman years before the events of the original series. The show earned a genuinely unusual critical reputation as a spinoff that many critics and viewers came to regard as artistically comparable to or even exceeding its acclaimed predecessor, a rare outcome for a prequel series built around a supporting character from an already beloved original show. Bob Odenkirk's lead performance, along with Rhea Seehorn's role as Jimmy's partner and eventual wife Kim Wexler, drew sustained critical acclaim across the show's six-season run, and the series became known for its meticulous, patient pacing and visual storytelling techniques directly inherited from Breaking Bad's own production team. Better Call Saul's combination of its rare success as an artistically comparable prequel spinoff and its meticulous inherited visual craftsmanship has made it one of the most critically acclaimed crime dramas of the entire television era, regardless of its connection to Breaking Bad.
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0 - 5Fargo
Fargo premiered on FX in April 2014, created by Noah Hawley as an anthology series inspired by the Coen Brothers' 1996 film of the same name, with each season telling an entirely new self-contained crime story set in the same broader Upper Midwest region and sharing the film's distinctive tonal blend of dark violence and deadpan regional comedy. Hawley secured the Coen Brothers' direct blessing and executive-producer involvement for the series, a genuinely significant endorsement for a television adaptation of an acclaimed film, and the show's anthology format let it recruit a rotating roster of major film actors for each season, including Billy Bob Thornton, Kirsten Dunst, Ewan McGregor, and Jon Hamm. The series became known for weaving genuine historical events and figures into its otherwise fictional crime narratives across different seasons and time periods, a structural choice that let each installment explore different specific decades of Upper Midwest regional history and culture. Fargo's combination of its direct Coen Brothers endorsement and its anthology structure recruiting major film talent for each self-contained regional crime story has made it one of the most critically respected crime anthology series of the streaming and prestige-cable era.
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0 - 6Dexter
Dexter premiered on Showtime in October 2006, based on Jeff Lindsay's series of novels, starring Michael C. Hall as a Miami police blood-spatter analyst who secretly moonlights as a serial killer targeting other murderers who've evaded justice, guided by a personal code taught to him by his adoptive father. The show's genuinely unusual premise — asking audiences to root for a serial killer protagonist by making his victims exclusively other killers — drew significant critical attention for its dark comedic tone and Hall's performance, and the series became one of Showtime's most commercially significant original dramas during its original eight-season run. The show's original 2013 series finale drew widespread and lasting critical backlash as one of the most poorly received endings in television history, a reception significant enough that Showtime later revived the franchise with "Dexter: New Blood" in 2021, specifically framed in part as an attempt to give the character and its audience a more satisfying conclusion. Dexter's combination of its genre-defining "sympathetic serial killer" premise and its unusually direct franchise response to fan backlash over its original ending has made it one of the most discussed and revisited crime dramas of the 21st century.
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