Top 32 Neo-Noir Crime Series of All Time

Rain-soaked detectives, desert drug empires and Nordic winters: this is crime television at its most morally grey, with prestige dramas sharing space with one-season cult gems.

1. 1
   True Detective

   HBO's 2014 anthology whose first season followed two Louisiana detectives on a seventeen-year ritual-murder case.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Twin Peaks

   David Lynch and Mark Frost's 1990 murder mystery that turned a small logging town into a dreamlike noir.
   858pts
3. 3
   Breaking Bad

   A chemistry teacher's descent into meth kingpin in the New Mexico desert.
   681pts
4. 4
   Ozark

   A financial planner launders cartel money from a Missouri lake town, drenched in blue-grey gloom.
   681pts
5. 5
   The Night Of

   HBO's 2016 miniseries following a student charged with murder through the New York justice system.
   636pts
6. 6
   Forbrydelsen

   The Danish original of The Killing, a landmark of Nordic noir with Sarah Lund's famous jumper.
   524pts
7. 7
   Mare of Easttown

   Kate Winslet's weary Pennsylvania detective investigates a local girl's murder.
   524pts
8. 8
   Sugar

   Colin Farrell plays a film-obsessed private eye hunting a missing woman in modern Los Angeles.
   524pts
9. 9
   The Bridge

   A body found on the Oresund Bridge pairs a Danish and a Swedish detective in this Nordic noir.
   454pts
10. 10
    Fargo

    Noah Hawley's anthology of Midwestern crimes spun out of the Coen brothers' film.
    454pts
11. 11
    Miami Vice

    Michael Mann's neon-soaked 1980s cop show that set crime TV to pop music and pastel suits.
    454pts
12. 12
    Dexter

    A Miami blood-spatter analyst who moonlights as a serial killer of killers.
    454pts
13. 13
    The Sinner

    An anthology where each season asks why an ordinary person committed a sudden crime.
    454pts
14. 14
    Tokyo Vice

    An American reporter descends into the 1990s Tokyo yakuza underworld in this Michael Mann-launched series.
    454pts
15. 15
    Sharp Objects

    Amy Adams plays a reporter returning to her Missouri hometown to cover two girls' murders.
    454pts
16. 16
    Bosch

    Amazon's long-running adaptation of Michael Connelly's Los Angeles homicide detective novels.
    372pts
17. 17
    Luther

    Idris Elba's brilliant, volatile London detective faces killers and his own darkness.
    372pts
18. 18
    Perry Mason

    HBO's 1930s Los Angeles origin story recasting the famous lawyer as a broke private eye.
    372pts
19. 19
    Altered Carbon

    A cyberpunk murder mystery in which minds can be swapped between bodies.
    372pts
20. 20
    Better Call Saul

    The Breaking Bad prequel charting small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill's slide into Saul Goodman, with black-and-white noir flash-forwards.
    272pts
21. 21
    Justified

    An Elmore Leonard-based neo-western noir about a quick-drawing marshal back in Harlan County, Kentucky.
    272pts
22. 22
    Top of the Lake

    Jane Campion's brooding New Zealand mystery about a detective searching for a missing pregnant girl.
    272pts
23. 23
    Babylon Berlin

    A lavish German series following a vice detective through Weimar-era Berlin's underworld.
    272pts
24. 24
    Veronica Mars

    A teen private eye works cases in a class-divided California town in this cult noir.
    272pts
25. 25
    Jessica Jones

    Marvel's hard-drinking private investigator haunted by a mind-controlling abuser.
    272pts
26. 26
    Mindhunter

    David Fincher's chilly drama about the FBI agents who invented criminal profiling.
    272pts
27. 27
    Terriers

    A cult 2010 one-season show about an ex-cop and an ex-crook working as unlicensed private eyes in San Diego.
    272pts
28. 28
    The Penguin

    Colin Farrell's Oz Cobb claws for power in Gotham's underworld in this HBO crime saga.
    272pts
29. 29
    The Wire

    David Simon's Baltimore saga tracing the drug trade through police, docks, city hall, schools and press.
    0pts
30. 30
    The Killing

    The rain-drenched Seattle murder investigation adapted from the Danish hit.
    0pts
31. 31
    Ripley

    Steven Zaillian's 2024 black-and-white Patricia Highsmith adaptation starring Andrew Scott.
    0pts
32. 32
    Cowboy Bebop

    The 1998 jazz-scored anime about bounty hunters drifting through a noir future solar system.
    0pts

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