If you’re enjoying True Detective: Night Country, starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, you might be looking for shows with similar vibes. There are always plenty of good mysteries on television, maybe even too many to choose from if you ask me!
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So let’s narrow them down. What makes a show like True Detective? You need strong lead characters. One, if not both or all of them, should be detectives. It doesn’t necessarily have to reinvent itself each season. True Detective is an anthology series with new murders and new characters every season. But I wouldn’t really say that that makes it like American Horror Story, for example. Even Fargo, which features new stories and characters (occasionally detectives) each season, is a comedy and not always about murder. True Detective is very much a drama, and so are these.
The Fall
In The Fall, Gillian Anderson plays Stella Gibson, a detective who’s hot on the heels of a serial killer (Jamie Dornan) in Belfast. This show is more about the cat-and-mouse relationship between the two of them than two detectives trying to crack a case. However, the mystery is gripping from the start and, if you stick with it, you might run into some other familiar faces from nerdy spaces like Colin Morgan and Archie Panjabi.
Mare of Easttown
Fans of the latest season of True Detective should definitely check out Mare of Easttown if they haven’t already. The show falls into the classic “missing girl” narrative and follows small-town detective Sergeant Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) as she investigates a murder alongside a county detective (Evan Peters) who doesn’t know the territory. Do you like your crime fighters female and tired? Do you like seeing what Evan Peters can do when he’s free from the clutches of Ryan Murphy?
The limited series will have you on the edge of your seat, and there are a ton of younger actresses in it who’ve had a great run recently: Angourie Rice (Mean Girls), Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), and Ruby Cruz (Bottoms and Willow).
Hannibal
ATTN: Sickos. Is the thing you like about True Detective the twisted, almost artistic ways that the killers arrange the bodies of their victims? Well, have I got a show for you! Detective Will Graham (Hugh Dancy)’s story becomes less and less about solving crime as Hannibal progresses, and more about his relationship with the titular psychiatrist, played by Mads Mikkelsen. However, there is still plenty of murder to go around. And it is wild that there are two prestige mystery dramas out there that feature killers who have a sick obsession with antler imagery.
The Killing
This adaptation of a Danish series also falls into the “missing girl” mystery genre. It’s kind of embarrassing how obsessed we are as a culture with dead or missing white girls, isn’t it? But as The Killing ran for four seasons, the central cases eventually varied. The show stars Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos as Detectives Stephen Holderand Sarah Linden, and is about their dynamic as much as it is about the murders. Sarah is supposed to mentor Stephen, whose background is in narcotics, which gives him an interesting perspective. (And of course one of them is by-the-book and one of them is a wildcard, as all buddy cops are.) How they investigate crime and work together is the draw.
Luther
If anyone is a true detective, it’s Luther. He solved a crime with insufficient evidence and got in way too deep. Then he tries to get out and keeps getting pulled back in. Like The Fall, this is another show about the push and pull between a detective and a criminal. But unlike another show with that dynamic, Killing Eve, the focus is on the detective. Luther’s nemesis Alice, played by Ruth Wilson, actually helps him catch other criminals, too.
Broadchurch
There are a lot of shows, especially in the UK, about a big city detective who becomes a fish out of water in a sleepy town dealing with crime for the first time. In that regard, Broadchurch takes the cake. David Tennant’s character, the aforementioned fish, and Olivia Colman’s character, the sleepy local detective have a great dynamic. It’s not ever romantic (though it could be), but it’s delightfully grumpy and banter-y. This show also has a great supporting cast, including Jonathan Bailey, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Georgina Campbell, Jodie Whittaker, James D’Arcy, Arthur Darvill, and Jacob Anderson.
Mindhunter
True Detective is as much of a psychological drama as it is a mystery series. The same can be said of Mindhunter, which blends reality and fiction to tell the stories of FBI agents who try to better understand—and maybe even empathize with—criminals to catch them. Both shows deal with serial killers. The biggest difference, I think, is that the directorial style of True Detective‘s Cary f*ckunaga is nothing like David Fincher’s in Mindhunter. (Neither auteur directed every episode of their respective series, but they did set the tone.)
Jessica Jones
Yes, we even found a way to sneak a Marvel show onto this list. But can you blame us? The titular character of Jessica Jones is an incredible detective. Like so many others on this list, she’s tired. She is avoiding working through trauma. But unlike the others here, she has superpowers! We could also talk about how David Tennant, a veteran of detective shows on and off of this list, plays one of the MCU’s most terrifying villains in Jessica Jones. But I get chills just thinking about him.
Sharp Objects
How did an adaptation of a Gillian Flynn novel starring Amy Adams and Chris Messina on HBO become somehow underrated? Of all the detective/crime series that the Home Box Office has put out in recent years, Sharp Objects is by far my favorite. It’s a Southern Gothic mystery set in the modern day. Camille, the woman who returns to her small town home to look into a series of disappearances and confront her own past, is a journalist rather than a detective. That job goes to Chris Messina’s character, and they make an explosive pair. It’s an incredibly nuanced, painful, cathartic show. High-key recommend.
Top of the Lake
Jane Campion, Academy Award-winning director of The Power of the Dog, created the Oceania-set detective series Top of the Lake. It stars Elisabeth Moss as a detective trying to work out the chilling mystery, no pun intended, of a pregnant young girl found in the middle of an almost frozen lake in New Zealand. In the second season, subtitled China Girl, Moss’ character solves a new murder mystery in Australia.
A Murder at the End of the World
Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij created one of the weirdest, most cerebral (and unjustly canceled) science fiction series with The OA. In A Murder at the End of the World, they’re back with a thriller about amateur sleuths. We’ve all been there, right? Watch enough mysteries or true crime documentaries and you start to think about what you would do differently. The premise of this series has some Agatha Christie flair. Darby, played by Emma Corrin, gets invited to a tech billionaire’s remote retreat where one of the guests (and Darcy’s former partner) turns up dead.
The Night Of
This mystery HBO limited series, which garnered quite a bit of acclaim much like True Detective, focuses on the suspect rather than law enforcement. In The Night Of, Riz Ahmed plays a young man who wakes up next to a dead body after stealing his father’s cab for a night on the town. The search for the truth brings up a lot from the past and sets a new course for the future of everyone involved as it barrels through his family and friends.
(featured image: HBO / BBC Two / Netflix)
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