The crime genre has always been far and away one of television’s most prolific, popular, and acclaimed. After all, it’s not just any genre that could be able to produce revolutionary classics of the stature of The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. But even with the genre’s outstanding track record, the last five years in particular have represented a bit of a golden age for crime television, with the release of several gems bound to go down in history as some of the genre’s best.
Whether it’s a miniseries like Mare of Easttown, a new chapter in a big franchise, like Dexter: Resurrection, or a new show that promises to provide some of the best televisual content in the coming years, like MobLand, the crime genre is one that has flourished beautifully in the 2020s. Five years have been enough to prove that there’s no time like the present to be a fan of crime television.
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10
‘Mayor of Kingstown’ (2021–Present)
Close-up of Mike McLusky looking tense in Season 4.Image via Paramount+
Ever since the creation of Yellowstone back in 2018, Taylor Sheridan has become one of the most prolific voices in modern television. The writer and producer, who began his career as the screenwriter of films like Sicarioand Hell or High Water, has created a whopping nine TV shows since Yellowstone. His third was Mayor of Kingstown, and fans are lucky that it’s still on the air.
It’s one of Sheridan’s highest-rated shows on IMDb, and for good reason. Though critics disliked the first two seasons, viewers have been there all along, singing the praises of this enthralling crime melodrama that’s bolstered by one of Jeremy Renner‘s strongest performances to date. It’s also a show that definitely gets better as it goes on, making it so that there’s even more of a reason to check it out today.
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9
‘MobLand’ (2025–Present)
Tom Hardy with slicked hair against a brick wall in LegendImage via Paramount+
Anchored by a jaw-dropping cast that features the likes of Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren, MobLandis only one season in, yet it already shows the potential to become one of the most beloved crime shows of modern times. It’s executive-produced by filmmaker Guy Ritchie, and all those who enjoy the director’s unique energy and sophistication are guaranteed to love MobLand.
The series doesn’t really reinvent the mobster genre in any significant way, but it never needs to. It executes all of the genre’s tropes with such panache that it’s difficult to resist, and its sense of suspense makes it one of the most intense crime shows in recent memory. Gritty, violent, darkly humorous, and delectably character-driven, it’s a must-see for anyone who loves Guy Ritchie.
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8
‘Bosch: Legacy’ (2022–2025)
Titus Welliver in Bosch: LegacyImage via Amazon MGM
Having aired its pilot in 2014, Boschis one of the best police procedurals that the small screen has seen at any point during the 21st century. After fans thought that the show had come to its natural conclusion following its seventh season, Bosch: Legacy—described by Titus Welliver himself, the show’s star, as a bona fide eighth season of Bosch—came into the picture.
It’s an incredible return to form, one of those Prime Video thrillers that are totally unpredictable. Though rising production costs and platform changes led Prime to cancel the series after its third season, fans’ love for it will never die. Intense, impeccably plotted, and tweaking the original series’ formula in all the right ways, it’s easily one of the greatest American crime shows of the 2020s so far.
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7
‘Mouse’ (2021)
Go Mu-Chi (Lee Hee-joon) and Jeong Ba-reum (Lee Seung-gi) working together in MouseImage via tvN
It’s not just the United States. Korea, too, has offered some of the best crime series of the last five years, but it’s easy to pick the best of the bunch: It has to be Mouse. One of the best K-dramas with the most plot twists, Mouse follows a detective and a rookie officer who work together to hunt down a serial killer. It’s a familiar enough concept, but the things that this K-drama does with it are constantly surprising.
This cat-and-mouse game should prove to be a gripping watch for all those who enjoy dark murder mysteries, even a tiny little bit. Popular thanks to its intense twists, its morally grey characters, and its mind-bending and psychologically-charged mind puzzles, it’s a grim and intricately plotted televisual crime masterpiece.
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6
‘Dexter: Resurrection’ (2025–Present)
Michael C. Hall as Dexter in Dexter: Resurrection.Image via Paramount+
Dexterstarted out as one of the most beloved serial killer crime shows ever made, but things led all the way to a finale that’s universally hated by fans. Dexter: New Bloodwas created as a way to explicitly course-correct the original’s controversial ending, but it ended up having just as widely-disliked a conclusion itself. Dexter: Resurrectionis the second course-correction that the franchise has put out, and so far, it seems like things will finally turn out well this time.
It’s one of those thrillers whose every episode is a masterpiece, at least so far. One season in, this rediscovery of everything that made the original magical in the first place is obviously a must-see for fans, but also so great that it should motivate anyone who hasn’t seen Dexter to jump aboard the train ASAP. With Michael C. Hall at his best and a healthy dose of campy absurdism, Resurrection is everything that fans had been waiting for years.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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5
‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ (2022–Present)
David and Lucy on the moon in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.Image via Netflix
At launch, CD Projekt Red’s action RPG Cyberpunk 2077 was nothing short of a disaster; but with time, the various improvements and updates delivered by the developer turned the game into something that can only be called a masterpiece. Along with this reappraisal came Netflix’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a prequel to the video game that didn’t need any live service in order to get great.
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Right off the bat, this miniseries proves to be one of the best cyberpunk anime of all time. With a level of visual flair and of stylish action that you don’t often see in many cartoons these days, Edgerunners is a relentlessly wild ride that never lets up. Perfectly paced and perfectly written, it’s perfect for all those who love not just the game that inspired it, but the cyberpunk genre in general.
4
‘Mare of Easttown’ (2021)
Kate Winslet stands outside the police station in Mare of Easttown.Image via HBO
HBO has put out some of the greatest miniseries of the 2020s as a whole, and Mare of Easttownis right up there as one of the studio’s best. It’s one of those detective shows that are perfect from start to finish, bolstered by one of the greatest performances of Kate Winslet‘s career. It’s ambitious, mysterious, impeccably written, and absolutely mesmerizing.
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It’s not just a twisty, irresistibly suspenseful murder mystery, but also a gripping character study with a raw emotional heart. The way it explores themes of grief and trauma is anchored in some surprisingly solid world-building, making for a drama that’s impossible to take one’s eyes off of at any point. It’s grounded, perfectly paced, and psychologically complex in ways that all fans of the crime genre should be able to appreciate.
3
‘Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord’ (2026–Present)
Star Wars: Maul – Shadow LordImage via Lucasfilm/Disney+
Who would have expected Star Wars, of all franchises, to produce one of the best crime series of the 2020s? That is, indeed, what Maul — Shadow Lordis: a crime show through and through, following the Sith Lord’s attempt to escape an Empire-occupied planet following the Clone Wars. It has only been one season, and yet this is already one of the best Star Wars shows thus far.
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Maul has been one of the franchise’s most fascinating characters since Dave Filoni brought him back in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and all Shadow Lord does is further expand the complexity and emotional resonance of the villain with the help of Sam Witwer‘s visceral performance. Action-packed to the core, this Clone Wars sequel runs at a breakneck pace that all fans of the genre are pretty much guaranteed to enjoy.
2
‘Adolescence’ (2025)
Jamie smirking while sitting at a table in AdolescenceImage via Netflix
Netflix’s Adolescenceis far more than just one of the best miniseries of the 2020s so far. It’s a gripping four-episode dissection of incel culture and how modern society is failing its young boys by allowing them to fall victim to it. Boosted by Stephen Graham‘s masterful performance and especially Owen Cooper‘s star-making work, it may be a relatively short drama, but it’s one with a ton of staying power.
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Each episode of Adolescence is done in a single shot, and that’s far more than just a simple gimmick: It’s a stylistic foundation that allows the series to tell its engrossing story visually as often as it does verbally. It’s true televisual perfection, a thematically sharp miniseries where every element works in perfect conjunction with the others to deliver a harrowing story that feels awfully timely.
1
‘The Penguin’ (2024)
Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in ‘The Penguin’Image via HBO
Matt Reeves‘ The Batmanbecame one of the most beloved depictions of the Caped Crusader in history as soon as it came out in 2022, and fans immediately started to clamor for more content set in this particularly fascinating version of Gotham City. That’s where The Penguincame in, and somehow, it managed to not just live up to expectations, but significantly surpass them.
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It’s one of the most perfect HBO shows of the last 10 years, because instead of sticking by the same kinds of tropes that have made superhero shows and movies feel stale during the 2020s, it’s a gritty crime drama first and foremost. With Colin Farrell and Cristin Milloti‘s powerhouse performances and the writing team’s incredible work, it’s a crime saga with as much pathos and gravitas as it has heart.
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