Best Detective Shows Worth Following

If you crave brawn with brains, Reacher stomps in with streetwise simplicity, brutal justice, and a loner who makes rooting for him way too easy.

Two Green Lanterns investigate a murder in the American heartland. The uneasy partnership and Earthbound investigation give this superhero drama a detective-story foundation.

Chicago P.D. stays gritty and relentless, delivering cases that feel ripped off the sidewalk and a squad that’s complicated in ways your favorite soap wishes it was.

Amateur sleuthing meets modern Manhattan neuroticism—Only Murders in the Building is pure cocktail-hour whodunit with banter worth rewinding.

Wednesday Addams turns detective in a show where mysteries are macabre and every clue comes laced with a raised eyebrow.

Lucifer lets the actual devil work a murder beat in LA, making every interrogation hellishly fun and morality deliciously muddy.

High Potential powers up with a lead whose outsider logic slices through bureaucracy—and crime scenes—with delightful irreverence.

The Mentalist hands us a lead who can out-charm the con artists and outwit the murderers, all with a twinkle in his eye—watch your tells.

Criminal Minds dives into the darkest motives, following a team whose empathy and profiling skills put them nose-to-nose with America’s nightmares.

Law & Order: SVU is the ironclad comfort food of detective TV: tough, unflinching, and addictively formulaic, with heroes you’ll follow for decades.