Hello everyone. It’s been a hell of a year. I’m exhausted, you’re exhausted. I bet you just want to curl up on your couch and watch TV under a blanket until you gently fall asleep. Well, the good news is, CrimeReads can at least help with that.
There were a lot of new crime shows this year. This wasn’t an easy list to write. But we think we’ve succeeded in pulling the cream-of-the-crime shows together for your viewing pleasure.
TV of other genres was excellent as well, and if you’re looking for recommendations in that department, try Season 1 of I’m a Virgo, Season 2 of Somebody Somewhere, Season 3 of Abbott Elementary, and Season 2 of The Bear. But this is a list of “crime shows,” so I’m not getting into any of these.
Okay, here we go. This article is not ranked, but Poker Face IS the best show of this year, so it’s going at the top anyway.
Poker Face, Season 1 (Peacock)
See above! Rian Johnson’s case-of-the-week howcatchem, styled after dramatic mini-movie shows like Columbo and cross-country standalones like Quantum Leap, is a revelation. The mysteries are clever, the guest-stars are unreal, and the protagonist, Natasha Lyonne’s scrappy, lie-detecting Charlie Cale, is b0th a canny throwback and a welcome original to the TV detective pantheon. If for some reason you haven’t watched it yet, get on it… but also, you’re in for a very special treat. No bullshit.
Perry Mason, Season 2 (HBO/MAX)
Season 1 of Perry Mason was good, but it was also a real bummer! Season 2 is exactly right, a noir-tinged, Depression-era murder mystery with twist after twist. It’s an absolute crime that Season 2 is its last; one of many scraps of collateral damage caused by the budget-slashing measures of streaming tyrant David Zaslav, who could have easily been a Season 2 Perry Mason villain.
Happy Valley, Season 3 (AMC+/Acorn)
Happy Valley has quietly been one of the best shows on TV for years, but I get if you haven’t watched it. The series, from Sally Wainwright, is dark to the point of heart-wrenching. And there hasn’t been a new installment for at least seven years. But Season 3 is a perfect little ecosystem of television: a cat-and-mouse chase with a serial killer that allows our heroine, Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood, the perfect showdown.
Reservation Dogs, Season 3 (Hulu)
Reservation Dogs! My heart! Season 3 of Sterlin Harjo’s beautiful series expanded the warm, community-aware conceit of the previous two into a very clear thesis for the whole series: that, yes, our beloved four central characters are coming of age, but so is everybody else, of all generations. It’s an extraordinary work of art. Watch it now if you haven’t yet, I’m begging you! (Yes, it’s barely a crime show, but let me recommend it please!)
A Murder at the End of the World, Season 1 (Hulu)
Oh man. Another gem from 2023, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s A Murder at the End of the World is an endlessly evocative, immersive, neo-noir whodunnit-y opus. Emma Corrin plays Darby, a novelist-turned-amateur-sleuth, who attempts to solve the murder of a billionaire at his estate in Iceland. Structure-wise, it boats a very familiar, Christie-esque conceit: Darby is one of eleven guests invited to this remote, extravagant location. When a murderer strikes, she must figure out who they are before they strike again. BUT! The murder investigation gives way to explorations about how the various people in this place reveal what’s become of our culture/humanity on the whole. Technology has begun alienating us from our community but also our own humanity. The dwindling resources and climate destruction (which will only increase in our future) has not created greater bonding and compassion but encouraged individual greed and competition, especially by such billionaires. It’s a smart, utterly modern murder mystery. (And it’s partially filmed at The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC!)
Only Murders in the Building, Season 3 (Hulu)
Season 3 of Only Murders was just as good as Season 1, if not better. This season focused on a murder taking place during the run of a Broadway show. Part backstage drama, part whodunnit, part showbiz comedy, it was a perfect entertainment engine. I probably keep mentioning this, but my doctoral dissertation, which I defended the week of the season finale, was about theater/performance and detection! I was watching Only Murders dazzled by the thematic overlaps between “putting on a show” and “solving a mystery.” Plus, the musical-within-the-show soundtrack has some absolute bangers… don’t ignore Steve Martin’s fantastic rendition of an investigative patter song called “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”
Barry, Season 4 (HBO/MAX)
Ah, Barry, Bill Hader’s brilliant, bleak series which grew darker and darker every season. Season 4 is the last one, and it asks the show’s essential question: if Barry is ever able to change and leave his old life behind for good. I won’t tell you. You should just watch.
Lupin, Part 3 (Netflix)
Lupin came back this year! It’s been a while, but finally it’s back. Parts 1 and 2 were heist stories, but Part 3 is a disappearing act! Steal away to your TV and watch Assane Diop (Omar Sy) vanish before your very eyes. Or, at least before the eyes of law enforcement. (Also, there is a heist, who am I kidding?)
Full Circle, Season 1 (MAX)
I’m worried that you slept on Full Circle, even though we warned you not to miss it! Directed by Steven Soderbergh and created/written by Ed Solomon, this ensemble show is about a bungled kidnapping in NYC that connects numerous different characters to one another. But as it contracts, it also spins out in surprising directions, leading to one of the greatest viewing experiences of the year.
Mrs. Davis, Season 1 (Peacock)
I don’t know if Mrs. Davis, a show about a nun who goes on a mission to take down an all-powerful AI (which has integrated itself into everyday life partially with a social media app that takes advantage of people’s need to clout chase), counts as a “crime” show. I don’t really know anything, anymore, after watching it, so we’re just going to roll like this. It’s a blazing, surrealist Western, a postmodern pilgrimage. The undersung Betty Gilpin is the (bright) star of this scintillating and very weird series, but there’s so much to love about it. And even better, it leaves you with much to think about. Worry about. Freak out about. Pick your poison.
Justified: City Primeval, Season 1 (Hulu)
Justified, one of the greatest crime series ever made, is back: well, sort of. This time we’re in Detroit for a wild ride through the Motor City, and Graham Yost is involved in the project, but not at the helm, and most of the cast is going to be unfamiliar, but we’re talking about Olyphant as Raylan Givens here.
–Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Deadloch, Season 1 (Prime)
Deadloch was described to me as “a feminist noir comedy.” Not saying I didn’t believe it, but I was skeptical. “Feminist” gets thrown around a lot. But Deadloch is indeed a funny, parodic, clever murder mystery with a genuine investment in feminism, not just in an examination of so-called “women’s experiences” but also a knowing, sobering look at how centralizing “women’s” narratives is often a big excuse (or oblivious attempt) to undermine and marginalize others, particularly people of color. Deadloch takes place at an lesbian artists’ collective in Tasmania, where a murder has taken place. The self-centered artists have fully planted their colony (with accompanying festival) in the middle of a simmering conflict between the region’s Indigenous population and the white families who have settled there to establish a fishing economy. And the two detectives who wind up investigating this case, both women, absolutely despise each other. Now that’s entertainment.
Dead Ringers, Season 1 (Prime)
Speaking of “feminism!” (Note the quotation marks!) The great Rachel Weisz dominates in not one but two performances, as codependent, identical twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle. You remember these two, right? Jeremy Irons played them in David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological horror-thriller of the same name, which was based on the 1977 Bari Wood and Jack Geasland novel Twins, which was based on the lives and suspicious deaths of real-life codependent, identical twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. But this show is different than all of these other incarnations, because it specifically asks lots of questions about what it means to be “women helping women” and the ways that this popular, comforting mantra is manipulated, exploited, and grotesquely twisted. Plus, do you really need a reason to watch Rachel Weisz in something?? TWO Rachel Weiszs? Get right outta town.
Honorable Mentions:
The Afterparty, Season 2 (AppleTV+)
Season 1 of The Afterparty was a cute murder mystery in the rough template of Rashomon—full of different perspectives on the same crime, told in different ways. It was mostly worth watching thanks to the comic stylings of Sam Richardson and Ben Schwartz’s big, splashy musical number. Season 2 is better than season 1—less redundant-feeling and, honestly, more fun.
You, Season 4 (Netflix)
I’m not going to say that Season 4 of You was better than any of the previous seasons… what I will say is that the second half is way better than the first. Globetrotting serial killer/stalker Joe Goldberg is in London this time, having landed a teaching gig at a prestigious university (somehow this, more than any of the murdery twists, is what made the show jump the shark for me… even if he’s adjuncting, there’s no way! There’s no way!). The season was broken into two parts, with the first one (unwisely) appearing to disingenuously mold itself into an eat-the-rich whodunnit. Thank God it slips these bonds in the show’s second part. But that’s all I’m gonna say.
The Resort, Season 1 (Peacock)
TECHNICALLY The Resort came out last year. December of 2022. But it came out AFTER we finalized our Best Of the Year list (I imagine this was the case for a lot of places), and I didn’t watch it until 2023. I’m sorry! But let me make it up to you: you need to watch The Resort! You need to. I’m begging you. I’ve been proselytizing since I first saw it in March of this year. Many of my family and friends have been converted. I won’t stop until everyone within my reach has seen it. The Resort, which premiered on Peacock at the very end of last year, is a series created by Andy Siara (Palm Springs) about a couple (Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper) who go to a resort in the Yucatan for an anniversary and stumble onto a 15-year-old unsolved missing persons case. But it’s more than what it appears to be at the outset (a dark relationship comedy, a clever riff on the true crime phenomenon, a “millennial whodunnit”-style show about young people finding personal fulfillment amid their unsatisfactory lives by solving a murder). It starts to transform after the first three perfect episodes, into a very literary, Borges-in-the-jungle, magical realist detective story extravaganza. I can’t tell you much more than that. You’ll just have to trust me.
