There has never been a better or busier time to be a fan of crime fiction and a watcher of television. Just about every week, one or more of Netflix, HBO, FX, Amazon, or AMC drops a new mystery or thriller worth watching, and hardly a season goes by without some new show coming around and makes us reevaluate everything we thought we knew about spy fiction, or the police procedural, or the legal drama, or the conspiracy thriller. Some of the best crime writers in the game today are working in TV writers’ rooms and even taking up the mantle themselves, as show runners. From adaptations of beloved novels (and now podcasts, too), to the re-imagining of world historical eras and crimes we thought we knew, to brand new stories that push the boundaries of the format, 2018 was packed with great stories that left us clamoring for the next episode. Ranking the very best from the world of crime is no easy feat, but fervent crime fans that we, we undertook it anyway. Hopefully you’re already enjoying all these shows, but if not, enjoy your binge-watching in the weeks to come. And if you disagree, by all means, let us know. The debate is half the fun.
10. American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (FX)
Sadly, few paid attention to Ryan Murphy’s second true crime exercise in restraint after the glowing reception that greeted American Crime Story’s first season, and perhaps that’s because Murphy is just so damn prolific, with not one, but two prestige television series in the same year. This moody, menacing drama is absolutely worth watching, we must insist; The Assassination of Gianni Versace transcends its sensationalist (and homophobic) true crime origin material to immerse the viewer in a nuanced view of the pressures and iniquities of 90s era gay life. Darren Criss delivers a tour-de-force performance as serial killer Andrew Cunanan, emphasizing the Ripley-like qualities of Cunanan’s character, and Tom Rob Smith injects the series with the mystery expertise of a professional crime writer, for a series rich in both text and subtext.
9. Ozark (Netflix)
Last year Ozark picked up the title of “TV’s Best Rural Noir,” long dormant after the finale of Justified, and also gave the world a much-needed primer on money laundering in resort town settings. This season picked up (exactly) where the first ended, with the Byrde family still under the thumb of the cartel, the local kingpin, and now promising to open a casino. Laura Linney steals even more scenes as the rope tightens in season 2, and the show continues with its trademark balance between dark brooding meditations and hundred-mile-an-hour-ahead storytelling. Ozark remains the class of the family crime drama world.
8. Bodyguard (Netflix)
From the incredible opening fifteen minute sequence, Bodyguard was the most breathtaking thriller of the year, a masterclass in pacing and suspense, with genuinely surprising twists. (As well as some questionable social politics, but that’s a different story.) Richard Madden (Robb Stark, like you didn’t know that already) stars as police sergeant and traumatized vet David Budd, now on security detail for a controversial politician and tasked with preventing various terrorist attacks around London while also clearing his own good name. This is the series that had all of Britain gripped and then a good chunk of America, too, when it landed on Netflix earlier this fall. If you watch the first episode, there’s almost no chance that you won’t sit down to rip out the next three to four hours in a row.
7. The Americans (FX)
The sixth and final season of The Americans was not the show’s highest peak of excellence, maybe, but it has to be on any list of 2018’s best TV for the sheer power of the overall experience of watching this groundbreaking espionage story play out over six years, plummeting toward the fall of the Soviet Union and the breaking of the Jennings family and their subversive life in the States. Without giving too much away about the finale, things go…awry let’s say, as the Jennings careen toward a bloody, poignant end game. Against all the odds, Paige Jennings turned out to be the star, or at any rate a star of the series, as The Americans transformed into a show about family, trauma, and a quietly tumultuous American era.
6. Homecoming (Amazon)
This thriller about a mysterious defense contractor providing either therapy or medical experimentation for homecoming US soldiers was one of the year’s trippiest shows and turned out to be so much more than the novelty (podcast adapted to TV) or star vehicle (Julia Roberts) that it seemed at first blush. The story is just so much more insidious than that, with a washed out funhouse aesthetic and a consistently vertiginous tone as the mystery deepened episode to episode. Stephan James stole the show, but Bobby Cannavale and Sissy Spacek put in solid turns as things progressed. All that, and Homecoming had the best run time (30 minute episodes) of any thriller this year.
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Sidebar
Wait, What About That Show I Love?
For the record, the following shows are not going to make the top 10:
Deliberate Snubs: The Little Drummer Girl; Counterpart; Babylon Berlin (sorry)
We Just Ran Out of Room and Couldn’t Reach a Consensus: The Good Fight; American Vandal; The Deuce; Narcos: Mexico
If We Could Pretend It Was a Crime Show We Would But We Can’t: Succession, Atlanta
End of Sidebar—Sorry About Your Favorite Show
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5. Barry (HBO)
Bill Hader and Alec Berg’s passion project about a hit man turned aspiring Hollywood actor was one of the year’s big critical successes, a half hour “dramedy” with a surprising grip on an especially bizarre tone and a knack for balancing heart, satire, and some dark, dark storytelling. Barry has been racking up awards and includes a nuanced and impressive turn from Hader alongside a talented cast of misfits and old hands. Probably Barry rank higher here if it weren’t an almost identical premise to the next show on our list, which, in the opinion of our editors anyway, is a superior though less acclaimed program. (Note: Barry was included over the objections of our editor, Dwyer Murphy, who has volunteered to debate anyone who thinks Barry is actually better than Get Shorty.)
4. Get Shorty (Epix)
This Elmore Leonard adaptation has quietly been picking up steam, and fans, over the last year, with a modern take on the Leonard classic about a gangster who goes Hollywood. Chris O’Dowd stars as mob muscle Miles Daly, stranded in the Nevada desert working for a cartel clique and dreaming of putting his family back together by going legit in the movie business. O’Dowd puts in an incredibly winning performance, but the real prize here is the wide and wonderful cast of scumbags and hustlers, each an innovative twist on the scuzzy demimonde Leonard created so vividly over so many decades. Ray Romano, for one, was born to play this role; same for Sean Bridgers, who has been quietly popping up in everything good since a solid turn on Deadwood. Get Shorty has every right to be more popular and more acclaimed, and might well get there now that it’s available on Netflix.
3. Sharp Objects (HBO)
Based on the chilling gothic mystery by Gillian Flynn, the long-awaited Sharp Objects adaptation didn’t disappoint, with a story that was simultaneously difficult to watch and impossible to turn away from. Amy Adams led the cast alongside Patricia Clarkson and Eliza Scanlen, producing one of the creepiest mother-daughter trios in recent history. Wind Gap, Missouri was the woebegone center of the action, with the disappearing girls that are the mainstays of crime fiction, but with a gothic, innovative take on the investigation into their vanishing, and a finale that would leave many a viewer gasping in the general direction of their TVs. Gillian Flynn didn’t need any help cementing her reputation as the author of the smartest, most disturbing crime stories around, but Sharp Objects went ahead and confirmed that for us anyway.
2. Better Call Saul (AMC)
Now in its fourth season, Better Call Saul is still the best slow-burn on television, a legal thriller in the cynical old tradition of Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict and all the passion for process and craft we’ve come to know and love from the Vince Gilligan universe. Saul has mostly left behind the early season fascination with doc review, class action lawsuits, and the particulars of tort law and is morphing into more of the thoughtful crime thriller we know from its progenitor series, Breaking Bad. In season four, Gus Fring comes closer to center stage as Jimmy / Saul takes on more dangerous work himself. Better Call Saul remains the gold standard for legal storytelling in the last decade, and one of the most rewarding, if criminally under-appreciated, shows on TV.
1. Killing Eve (BBC America)
This stylish cat-and-mouse espionage flick was the revelation of the year, with a sensual, subversive take on the format and Sandra Oh with one of the year’s best performances. Developed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Killing Eve was a boisterous and thoughtful take an old story—the hunt for a sociopathic killer, an international assassin played with relish by Jodie Corner. The style is undeniably sumptuous, the settings lush, the story at times incredible fun, punctuated by moments of great sadness and longing. No show was as compulsively watchable or rewarding as Killing Eve, easily the most provocative and innovative thing to happen to spy fiction in years.
