Crime serial drama

Crime serial drama. A subgenre of crime fiction which portrays the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. Unlike in other types of crime fiction, the perpetrator may be known at the outset of the story.

Crime drama is a genre of television and film that focuses on the investigation and resolution of a crime, and often includes elements like detectives, thieves, and victims: 

Crime dramas differ from crime thrillers in that they tend to focus on a more realistic portrayal of the criminal world, rather than violence and gunplay. 

Crime dramas typically focus on the investigation of a crime, rather than the courtroom. They often feature hero characters who commit, investigate, or punish crimes. 

Crime dramas often include suspense and mystery, and may feature gunplay. 

Crime dramas often take place at the scene of the crime, where the audience may follow the detective as they examine the crime scene. 

Some examples of crime dramas include police procedurals, which are a popular subgenre of the crime drama genre. Other examples include Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, Numbers, and The Mentalist.  [draft]

The best crime serial dramas on Netflix include:

Bodyguard

Richard Madden won a Golden Globe for his performance in this British series as war veteran turned bodyguard David Budd, who, after stopping a suicide bomber on a train, is assigned as security detail to Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes).

Montague is a conservative politician who’s recently come under fire for backing a controversial bill, and a good amount of the show’s tension comes from her ideological clashes with Budd, who opposes her politics but is nonetheless tasked with protecting her life.

Taut and thrilling, Bodyguard doesn’t romanticize political intrigue, instead shining a light on the nefarious acts governments get away with every day.

Breaking Bad

Vince Gilligan’s propulsive drama brought us one of TV’s most notorious antiheroes in Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher who unlocks his capacity for brutality when he starts making and distributing meth.

He partners with one of his former students, the lovable burnout Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Over five seasons, they descend into the dangers and horrors of the drug trade and get entangled with the cartel.

Once you finish the series, you can check out its prequel, Better Call Saul, which tracks the transformation of scrappy attorney Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) into the flashy criminal lawyer Saul Goodman. If you love stories of moral decline, you can’t get much better than these two. 

Dexter

This Emmy-winning series follows Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a forensic analyst specializing in blood spatters who also happens to be a serial killer.

But Dexter isn’t your average murderer — he’s a murderer with a conscience, who justifies his crimes by killing only guilty criminals who have evaded proper punishment by law.

The series digs into Dexter’s traumatic backstory to explain why he is the way he is, and spends plenty of time getting inside his mind.

But the best thing about Dexter is that it’s not just a crime show; at any given point, it can also become a horror story, a family drama, a dark comedy, or a psychological thriller.

Collateral

With only four episodes to tell its story, Collateral, created and written by playwright David Hare, wastes no time throwing the audience right into the center of a seemingly inexplicable mystery: In London, a delivery worker is shot and killed while delivering a pizza to the ex-wife (played by Billie Piper) of a member of Parliament, in what appears to be a military-style assassination.

Assigned to investigate the case is Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie (Carey Mulligan), who quickly begins to realize that the whole murder plot is part of a knotty web that involves disparate factions of the British establishment, from the military to the church. 

Collateral takes the time to flesh out the criminals and the cops. It employs a handful of suspenseful twists and a prescient commentary on Europe’s refugee crisis.

How to Get Away With Murder

Produced by Shonda Rhimes, this legal thriller stars Viola Davis as Annalise Keating, a law professor who, alongside five of her students, becomes involved in a murder. And that’s just in Season 1!

Throughout six seasons, the characters engage in corruption, betrayal, and more than their fair share of killings. Amid all of that, they continue going to class, participating in court cases, and becoming entangled in each other’s love lives.

With each season teasing out a mystery via flash-forwards, How to Get Away with Murder makes for an unpredictably twisty watch. 

Griselda

Sofia Vergara transforms in the titular role of this Emmy-nominated limited series inspired by the life of crime boss Griselda Blanco.

Beginning in the late ’70s and spanning into the early ’80s, Griselda maps Blanco’s journey from fleeing Medellín to keep her children safe into becoming the ruthless queenpin who was known as Godmother of Cocaine.

What makes Griselda so interesting is how unglamorous it makes its central figure’s rise seem, showing how easily people can be warped by greed and the temptation of power.

The drama is anchored by Vergara’s committed performance, but scene-stealing turns from Martín Rodríguez as Blanco’s hit man and Alberto Guerra as her husband help bring the world to life.

MINDHUNTER

Films like Se7en and Zodiac made David Fincher synonymous with the crime genre (see also: The Killer), and Mindhunter — which he executive produced and directed several episodes of — has his signature style over it.

Set during the early days of criminal profiling in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the series spotlights the inception of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany star as a duo of FBI agents who explore the minds and motives of serial killers by interviewing them, and Anna Torv plays the psychology professor who joins their team.

The drama draws parallels between the interviewers and their subjects, which makes for chilling, compelling television.

Money Heist

If you’re searching for a crime series that’s a bit less grim than some of the genre’s other offerings, give the deliciously fast-paced international sensation Money Heist a try.

The series follows two different bank robberies, which have been put together by an enigmatic figure known only as “Professor,” who recruits a highly skilled group of people to carry out a pair of intricate heists.

A snappy blend of action and emotional drama (plus the built-in Halloween costume factor courtesy of those red jumpsuits) turned Money Heist into a fan favorite. Spin-offs include Money Heist: Korea and the upcoming Berlin, which focuses on Pedro Alonso’s titular jewel thief.

Narcos

One of the most famous drug kingpins in modern history, Pablo Escobar (played here by Wagner Moura), gets his story told in the gritty and violent Narcos.

While the first season tracks Escobar’s journey as he becomes the world’s most prolific cocaine distributor, it also focuses on the urgent search for him, spearheaded by two DEA agents (played by Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook) — it’s an engrossing cat-and-mouse thriller.

Similarly, its spin-off series Narcos: Mexico, led by Diego Luna as the ruthless Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, explores the creation of the Mexican drug trade and the Guadalajara Cartel, as well as the DEA’s pursuit of Gallardo.

Ozark

Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams’ drama centers around Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a financial adviser who, when we meet him at the beginning of the series, has already been knee-deep in a money-laundering scheme with a drug cartel for years.

After a job goes sideways and his partner is killed, Marty moves his wife (Laura Linney) and kids to Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks region to, sure, save their lives — but mostly to launch an even bigger operation.

Once there, the Byrdes become involved with the local crime scene, which includes other families and, later, the mafia.

A tense thriller, Ozark is about the insatiable hunger for money and power — and the dark things people will do to maintain their status.

Peaky Blinders

Cillian Murphy stars as Thomas Shelby, the steely and ambitious boss of a crime family in 19th-century Birmingham’s criminal underworld.

Across six seasons, the series traces his rise, even as new foes threaten to disrupt the family’s ascension from street gangsters to legitimate political players.

With an anachronistic rock ’n’ roll soundtrack, glamorous costumes, and a host of layered performances from Murphy and the ever-expanding supporting cast — which includes Anya Taylor-Joy, Tom Hardy, and the late Helen McCrory, among many others — this slick period piece (which now has a movie on the way) is worthy of its passionate fan base. 

The Sinner

Each season of The Sinner finds Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) investigating the unlikely culprits of various crimes.

Season 1 finds him trying to uncover the truth of why Cora Tannetti (Jessica Biel), a mild-mannered mother, stabbed a man to death in an apparently random act of violence, while Season 2 sends him back to his upstate New York hometown to look into the case of a young boy who claims to have poisoned his parents.

Ambrose’s own deep-seated trauma helps him relate to the people he’s investigating, which subsequently helps him deduce their true motives, making for a mystery that’s less of a whodunit and more of a whydunit.

Your Honor

Your Honor, which ran for two seasons from ’20–’23, was Bryan Cranston’s first starring role after Breaking Bad, playing another family man who gets in over his head when he turns to a life of crime.

But unlike Walter White, Your Honor’s Michael Desiato takes no pleasure in his descent into dealings with drug cartels and mob bosses. When the series begins, Michael is a New Orleans judge whose teenage son accidentally kills another boy — who just happens to be connected to the mafia — in a hit-and-run.

Desperate to protect his son, Michael helps him cover up his involvement, which has dangerous consequences for their entire family. In addition to Cranston, Your Honor’s stacked cast includes Michael Stuhlbarg, Carmen Ejogo, Margo Martindale, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Maura Tierney.