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The 18 Best Murder Mystery TV Series of All Time

By YPB Team

Rumpled lieutenants, Nordic gloom, an Oxford Jaguar and a podcast made in an apartment block. Prestige and comfort viewing on the same list.

  1. Agatha Christie's Poirot — ranked #11
    Agatha Christie's Poirot
    ITV's 1989-2013 series in which David Suchet played every major Poirot story across 70 episodes.
  2. Columbo — ranked #22
    Columbo
    The inverted mystery where you see the killer first and watch the lieutenant close in.
  3. Broadchurch — ranked #33
    Broadchurch
    The 2013 ITV drama about a boy's death in a Dorset town, written by Chris Chibnall.
  4. True Detective — ranked #44
    True Detective
    HBO's anthology, whose first season followed two Louisiana detectives across seventeen years.
  5. Inspector Morse — ranked #55
    Inspector Morse
    The Oxford-set ITV series that ran from 1987 and spawned two spin-offs.
  6. Line of Duty — ranked #66
    Line of Duty
    The BBC series about an anti-corruption unit investigating its own police force.
  7. Sherlock — ranked #77
    Sherlock
    The BBC's modern-dress Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
  8. Miss Marple — ranked #88
    Miss Marple
    The BBC's 1984-1992 adaptations with Joan Hickson, the Marple many readers still picture.
  9. Murder, She Wrote — ranked #99
    Murder, She Wrote
    The long-running CBS series with Angela Lansbury as mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher.
  10. The Killing — ranked #1010
    The Killing
    The Danish series Forbrydelsen, whose first season fixed on one girl's murder for twenty episodes.
  11. Twin Peaks — ranked #1111
    Twin Peaks
    David Lynch's 1990 series that asked who killed Laura Palmer and answered stranger things.
  12. Only Murders in the Building — ranked #1212
    Only Murders in the Building
    The Hulu comedy about three true-crime podcasters investigating their own apartment block.
  13. Mare of Easttown — ranked #1313
    Mare of Easttown
    HBO's 2021 miniseries with Kate Winslet as a small-town Pennsylvania detective.
  14. Luther — ranked #1414
    Luther
    The BBC series with Idris Elba as a detective who keeps crossing his own lines.
  15. Endeavour — ranked #1515
    Endeavour
    The prequel following a young Morse through 1960s Oxford.
  16. Father Brown — ranked #1616
    Father Brown
    The BBC daytime series with Mark Williams as Chesterton's priest-detective.
  17. Bones — ranked #1717
    Bones
    The forensic procedural pairing a forensic anthropologist with an FBI agent.
  18. Death in Paradise — ranked #1818
    Death in Paradise
    The BBC series putting a British detective on a fictional Caribbean island.
TV shows323crime58mystery13detective6

Comments 1

Seventy episodes of Poirot over twenty-four years, plus Joan Hickson's Miss Marple, make two of these eighteen shows hers: https://youpick.best/articles/agatha-christie-ranked-many-ways

YP
ypb-teamAug 21
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