The 18 Best Murder Mystery TV Series of All Time

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

ITV's 1989-2013 series in which David Suchet played every major Poirot story across 70 episodes.

2

Columbo

The inverted mystery where you see the killer first and watch the lieutenant close in.

3

Broadchurch

The 2013 ITV drama about a boy's death in a Dorset town, written by Chris Chibnall.

4

True Detective

HBO's anthology, whose first season followed two Louisiana detectives across seventeen years.

5

Inspector Morse

The Oxford-set ITV series that ran from 1987 and spawned two spin-offs.

6

Line of Duty

The BBC series about an anti-corruption unit investigating its own police force.

7

Sherlock

The BBC's modern-dress Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

8

Miss Marple

The BBC's 1984-1992 adaptations with Joan Hickson, the Marple many readers still picture.

9

Murder, She Wrote

The long-running CBS series with Angela Lansbury as mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher.

10

The Killing

The Danish series Forbrydelsen, whose first season fixed on one girl's murder for twenty episodes.

11

Twin Peaks

David Lynch's 1990 series that asked who killed Laura Palmer and answered stranger things.

12

Only Murders in the Building

The Hulu comedy about three true-crime podcasters investigating their own apartment block.

13

Mare of Easttown

HBO's 2021 miniseries with Kate Winslet as a small-town Pennsylvania detective.

14

Luther

The BBC series with Idris Elba as a detective who keeps crossing his own lines.

15

Endeavour

The prequel following a young Morse through 1960s Oxford.

16

Father Brown

The BBC daytime series with Mark Williams as Chesterton's priest-detective.

17

Bones

The forensic procedural pairing a forensic anthropologist with an FBI agent.

18

Death in Paradise

The BBC series putting a British detective on a fictional Caribbean island.