15 Greatest Crime Dramas Of The 21st Century

The turn of the 21st century ushered in the Golden Age of Television, and that Golden Age was especially lucrative for the crime genre. In 1999, David Chase created a little TV show called The Sopranos, about a mob boss balancing his violent duties at work with his responsibility to his family at home. It challenged the notion that TV protagonists had to be likable. For decades, network executives assumed that audiences had to like a character to tune in to see them. But Tony Soprano proved they didn’t have to be likable; they just had to be interesting.

We saw Tony strangle a man to death in cold blood midway through the first season of The Sopranos, and we kept watching because his life was so fascinating. The Sopranos broadly influenced the entire TV industry to move toward subtler writing, mature themes, cinematic visuals, and moral gray areas, but it also inspired a wave of similar crime dramas about morally gray antiheroes.

Breaking Bad told the story of a mild-mannered chemistry teacher becoming a murderous drug lord. The Shield told the story of a corrupt cop who’s not above killing his fellow boys in blue to protect his dark secrets. True Detective and Mare of Easttown told chilling murder mysteries contrasting a cop’s grisly investigation with their messy personal lives. Narcos and Peaky Blinders brought real-life criminals to the screen. The Wire might be the single greatest achievement in the history of television, let alone the best crime drama of the past quarter of a century.

There’s been no shortage of great crime dramas throughout the 21st century. Hannibal pushed the boundaries of gore on network television, Daredevil redeemed an iconic Marvel superhero who’d been butchered by Ben Affleck, and Mindhunter took us back to the FBI agents who profiled the very first serial killers. From Adolescence to Big Little Lies, these are the best TV crime dramas since 2000 (or 1999, in one special case).

15 Narcos

Breaking Bad paved the way for plenty of shows about fictional drug lords, but Netflix made a show about a real one. Narcos tells the true story of Pablo Escobar, as a DEA agent heads down to Colombia to take on the Medellín cartel. The series aped the style of Goodfellas, especially in its early episodes, so it moves briskly and never gives you a second to get bored.

The cast of Narcos is full of actors who would soon become really famous, from future megastar Pedro Pascal to future Best Actor nominee Wagner Moura. Narcos is well-written, well-acted, and well-paced, with a fascinating folk hero at its center. Escobar is an interesting figure, because he gave back to the community, and Moura captures that complexity.

14 Daredevil

More than a decade after the Ben Affleck movie, Daredevil finally got the on-screen adaptation he deserved with his own Netflix series. Daredevil is both an all-action martial arts show featuring intense fight choreography on the same level as The Raid and John Wick, but it’s also a gritty prestige crime drama. Charlie Cox is perfectly cast as both righteous lawyer Matt Murdock and his masked vigilante alter ego, and Vincent D’Onofrio is perfectly cast opposite him as Matt’s nemesis, the Kingpin.

Daredevil is so good, it transcends the superhero genre — it’s just a genuinely great TV series. The revival on Disney+, Daredevil: Born Again, hasn’t been quite as groundbreaking, but it’s always a joy to see Cox as the Man Without Fear, and the reboot really found its feet in the second season.

13 Hannibal

Mads Mikkelsen had some very roomy shoes to fill when he was cast to replace Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Bryan Fuller reimagined Hannibal as a serialized TV drama chronicling Will Graham’s efforts to bring the titular cannibal to justice. The Silence of the Lambs is the best-known Hannibal story, but the Hannibal TV show went a lot further back in the twisted saga of Dr. Lecter.

Hannibal pushed the boundaries of gore and violence on network television. There are some images in Hannibal that would even be disturbing for HBO viewers, let alone NBC’s audience. But it’s not just shock value; it’s a deeply engaging psychological study of a cold-blooded serial killer and the jaded FBI agent on his tail.

12 Sherlock

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss brought Sherlock Holmes into the modern day with their hit BBC series Sherlock. Sherlock has short seasons, but long episodes, so each episode feels like its own little movie adapting a different Arthur Conan Doyle mystery for a contemporary setting.

Any Holmes-based project lives and dies by the chemistry between Holmes and Watson, and Sherlock absolutely nailed that. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman share an electric on-screen dynamic in these roles, perfectly translating this detective duo’s witty banter from the page to the screen.

11 True Detective

The first season of True Detective might be the single greatest TV masterpiece of the 21st century. It’s a devilishly complex murder mystery, told across two intricately interconnected narrative timelines, anchored by captivating characters and powerful performances.

The subsequent seasons have been more hit-and-miss — season 2 was an unmitigated disaster, then season 3 felt like a return to form, then season 4 made a daring departure into the supernatural — but that stellar first season props up the entire series. If it wasn’t for seasons 2 through 4 dragging it down, season 1 would probably be at the top of this list.

10 Peaky Blinders

Steven Knight brought the Sopranos/Sons of Anarchy formula to the UK in his sleeper hit Peaky Blinders. Loosely based on a real criminal gang that operated from the 1880s to the 1920s, Peaky Blinders follows a merry band of misfit Brummie gangsters as they navigate a rapidly evolving world in the aftermath of World War I.

The series started to go downhill when Tommy Shelby got into politics and the writers started relying too much on dream sequences as a storytelling shortcut, but it put Cillian Murphy on the map. Peaky Blinders elevated an acclaimed character actor to a global superstar.

9 Big Little Lies

Based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies is both an intriguing mystery thriller about a suspicious death in a sleepy seaside town, and a gripping ensemble drama about a ragtag group of local mothers navigating parenthood, gossip, and evil exes. What was initially a limited series proved to be so popular that it was renewed for a second season, and Moriarty came in to continue the story.

Big Little Lies has one of the most star-studded casts ever assembled: Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, Adam Scott, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgård — in season 2, the show even added Meryl Streep to the ensemble. That A-list lineup would be the envy of every movie producer in Hollywood, let alone every TV producer.

8 Adolescence

Very few TV shows will have you locked in as quickly as Adolescence. In the first few minutes, we see armed police break into a suburban home and arrest a petrified 13-year-old boy on suspicion of murder. From there, you can’t wait to see where it goes next.

Each episode of Adolescence is captured in one long take, and plays out in real time, so it all feels so hauntingly real. That intense realism is compounded by poignant performances that feel like living, breathing human beings (Owen Cooper, in particular, gives a star-making turn as the young ne’er-do-well). Adolescence is a harrowing exploration of the dark influence of social media and the manosphere on today’s youths. It made such an impact that it became a talking point in Parliament.

7 The Shield

After the Rodney King beating and the Rampart scandal, The Shield creator Shawn Ryan didn’t think the old-school cop show formula of Dragnet and Columbo held any weight anymore. Those shows were about good, honest lawmen catching bad guys, but in real life, more and more lawmen were revealing themselves to be the bad guys.

So, Ryan came up with a police procedural where crooked cops are the protagonists. Vic Mackey and his Strike Team aren’t interested in serving justice; they’re only interested in serving themselves. The Shield is a refreshingly frank, refreshingly un-Hollywood-ized portrayal of modern American policing.

6 Mindhunter

David Fincher has chronicled the horrific crimes of serial killers, both fictional (John Doe) and real (Zodiac), throughout his entire career. In his brilliant but sadly short-lived Netflix series Mindhunter, he went back to the source.

Mindhunter follows a trio of FBI agents in the late 1970s and early 1980s as they build up the profile of your typical serial killer. But it’s not just a true-crime history lesson; Mindhunter’s supporting cast is a who’s-who of notorious mass murderers, but the series as a whole really digs into the mental toll of studying gruesome murders as a nine-to-five job.