12 Best American Crime Shows Of All Time

Crime stories are an essential part of the American myth. Gangster movies like Scarface and The Godfather use the ruthless ambitions of a criminal kingpin to capture the dark side of the American Dream. The Sopranos, a crime show, was singlehandedly responsible for the Golden Age of Television. From The Wire to Breaking Bad to True Detective, the lion’s share of iconic American TV shows belong to the crime genre. 12 Boardwalk Empire Terence Winter applied all the lessons he’d learned working under David Chase as a writer on The Sopranos to create his own near-flawless HBO crime drama. Boardwalk Empire takes place in Atlantic City during Prohibition, and stars Steve Buscemi as a corrupt politician in bed with the gangsters and the bootleggers. While Winter was handling the writing, none other than Martin Scorsese himself set a uniquely cinematic visual style for the series in its jaw-dropping pilot episode. Scorsese mostly stepped away from the show after directing the pilot, but he set a very high bar with that first episode. 11 Sons Of Anarchy Sons of Anarchy is Easy Rider meets Shakespeare. It takes the same basic plot of Hamlet — a young hero, grieving the death of his father, contends with a stepdad hoping to usurp the throne — and transplants it into a gun-running biker gang. This series has everything you want from a bingeable show: a stacked ensemble cast, a lot of exciting action sequences, and a tangled web of riveting character dynamics. Sons of Anarchy is basically The Sopranos on wheels. 10 True Detective The first season of True Detective is one of the finest TV masterpieces of the 21st century. It’s a deeply cinematic piece of filmmaking, with breathtaking oners and a sumptuous Southern Gothic aesthetic, and a literary piece of storytelling. This complicated murder mystery, told across two timelines and woven in and out of this detective duo’s chaotic personal lives, is almost novelistic in its depth and complexity. This isn’t your average cop show. When True Detective proved to be a big ratings success, HBO decided to turn it into an anthology series. None of the subsequent seasons have lived up to the first, but that debut season is enough to prop up the entire series. 9 Hannibal Hannibal Lecter has been done to death on the screen, and perfected by Anthony Hopkins, so a TV prequel might not have seemed necessary. But Bryan Fuller found a brand-new way in, and Mads Mikkelsen gave a chilling, unforgettable performance on par with Hopkins’. After three seasons, Hannibal became the victim of an early cancellation. NBC killed the show, then ate its liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Hannibal was always teetering on the brink of cancellation, because it was constantly pushing the boundaries of gore and violence on network television (it was often even gorier and more disturbing than cable shows like The Walking Dead). 8 Mare Of Easttown Much like the first season of True Detective, Mare of Easttown is a masterpiece HBO miniseries in which a detective’s messy personal life starts to bleed into their latest murder investigation. Kate Winslet gives one of the best performances of her career as the titular sleuth, a hometown hero facing pressure to catch a local predator. Mare of Easttown is a perfectly crafted whodunit, laying out all the pieces we need to figure out the case for ourselves and taking plenty of time to round out the characters along the way. The murder mystery ultimately becomes secondary to your emotional investment in these complicated human beings. 7 The Shield After the Rampart scandal and the beating of Rodney King, Shawn Ryan realized that the traditional, old-school American cop shows — shows like Dragnet and Columbo, about good, honest lawmen — just didn’t hold any water anymore. So, he gave the format a much-needed modern update. The Shield is a police procedural like any other, except the cops in this one are corrupt. They beat suspects, they pillage crime scenes, and they murder their fellow cops. The Shield is much more reflective of the moral gray areas of American policing than your average Hollywood cop show. 6 Mindhunter After chronicling the crimes of serial killers both real and fictional on the big screen, David Fincher went back to the source on the small screen. Mindhunter follows a trio of FBI agents as they study early murder sprees to build a profile of what we now know as a serial killer. It’s a fascinating piece of criminological history. But, going a little deeper than that, it’s also a powerful look at the psychological consequences of examining these horrific acts of inhumanity as a nine-to-five job. 5 Barry Bill Hader’s Barry starts off as a gimmicky dark comedy about a hitman who aspires to become an actor. And at first, it’s a really fun little crime caper, with plenty of hilarious twists and turns, and an ensemble of lovable oddballs. But as the series went on, Barry deemphasized its comedic elements and became a darker, grimmer character study. Over time, Barry doubled down on the harrowing mental toll of all the bloodshed, and subverted the entire action genre. 4 Breaking Bad Vince Gilligan struck gold when he came up with the premise for Breaking Bad. Not only did he have a strong hook with a ticking clock; he had the driving force of change, which TV shows had traditionally avoided in order to maintain a status quo. The external plot of Breaking Bad sees milquetoast family man Walter White resorting to cooking meth to pay his medical bills and provide for his family when he’s unexpectedly diagnosed with lung cancer. But the internal story is all about how a bitter man, angry at the world, lets out his inner monster and becomes irredeemable. It was the perfect dramatic use for this long-form narrative medium. 3 Better Call Saul In the wake of Breaking Bad’s success, we saw a long line of similar character studies of criminal antiheroes. Out of all these Breaking Bad copycats, the only one that was able to top Breaking Bad was Breaking Bad’s own spinoff, Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul is another meticulously crafted, poignantly observed study of a broken man, and it’s even deeper and subtler and more nuanced than Breaking Bad was. Saul Goodman was the comic relief in Breaking Bad, but Jimmy McGill turned out to be every bit as complex and human as Walt.