For the longest time, thriller shows would rely on a single hook where the entire story revolved around solving the mystery and catching the killer. Thankfully, the genre has evolved over the last few years. Modern thriller shows aren’t interested in building suspense simply by hiding information from the audience. Instead, they operate in a much denser psychological space to make viewers question everything as the story progresses.
That’s what makes this new wave of thrillers feel compelling without ever relying on cheap shock value and meaningless twists. Their idea is to pull the audience into messy, unpredictable worlds and never let them feel fully comfortable again. Here is a list of must-see new thrillers that do exactly that and are perfect from start to finish.
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6
‘Severance’ (2022–Present)
Adam Scott as Mark, looking serious with blood on his face in the Severance Season 2 Finale.Image via Apple TV+
Severanceis easily one of the most original thriller shows of the last few years. The Apple TV series follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott), an employee at the mysterious Lumon Industries, where workers undergo a procedure that surgically separates their work memories from their personal memories. Their “innie” selves only exist inside the office, while their “outie” selves have no idea what happens once they step into the building. The concept is disturbing on its own, but the show takes it even further by turning the workplace into a psychological maze full of strange rules, empty hallways, and secrets that seem impossible to understand. Aside from its compelling central story, Severance is also a masterclass in character-driven storytelling.
Mark’s grief over the death of his wife gives the narrative a strong emotional foundation while Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) each bring their own sense of humanity to Lumon’s otherwise sterile world. The show is a corporate satire, a sci-fi thriller, and a psychological mystery all at once without ever feeling convoluted. Every episode adds another disturbing layer to Lumon’s world, and the tension only grows as the characters begin questioning the lives they have been forced to live. It is rare for a thriller this strange to feel so controlled, but Severance thrives in this restraint while also feeling genuinely haunting thanks to its mythology.
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5
‘Slow Horses’ (2022–Present)
Gary Oldman in Season 4 Episode 4 of Slow Horses looking serious.Image via Apple TV
Slow Horses is another show that proves spy thrillers don’t need glamorous agents or world-ending stakes to be entertaining. The Apple TV+ series follows a group of disgraced MI5 operatives who have been dumped into Slough House, an administrative dead-end reserved for agents who have completely messed up their careers. The rude, irritated, and completely checked-out Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) leads this team that barely does anything. However, things take a turn when a real crisis suddenly forces everyone back into action. It’s interesting how Slow Horses begins as a workplace comedy about failed spies but slowly evolves into one of the sharpest thrillers on TV currently. The fact that this crew is full of bitter, exhausted, and professionally humiliated people gives Slow Horses a sense of realism that no other show in the genre can fully match.
Jack Lowden’s River Cartwright is one of the standout characters in the show, who desperately wants to redeem himself and serves as the perfect counterpart to Lamb’s constant nihilism. Slow Horses also strikes the perfect tonal balance between comedy and tense espionage storylines. Unlike many modern spy shows that become overly complicated just for the heck of it, Slow Horses keeps its storytelling tight and character-focused. Even when the plots grow larger in scale, the emotional core always comes back to these deeply dysfunctional people trying to survive inside a system that has already discarded them. That consistency is a huge reason why Slow Horses has resonated so well with the audience.
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4
‘His & Hers’ (2026)
Image via Netflix
His & Hers is an unsettling thriller based on Alice Feeney’s bestselling novel. The miniseries follows former news anchor Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson), who returns to her small Georgia hometown after learning about a murder connected to people from her past. At the same time, her estranged husband, Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), is officially investigating the case, which immediately creates tension because neither of them fully trusts the other anymore.
The premise allows the show to keep introducing new secrets, different perspectives, and the smallest of details that completely change how viewers see the story. His & Hers thrives on paranoia, and this storytelling approach really benefits from the series’ claustrophobic, small-town setting. His & Hers doesn’t throw constant twists at the audience for hollow shock value, but when the reveals do come, they actually feel unpredictable. The show will have viewers thinking they have solved the mystery before pulling the rug out from under them, and that’s exactly what keeps them wanting more.
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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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3
‘The Girlfriend’ (2025)
Laura (Robin Wright) holding Danny’s (Laurie Davidson) face in The GirlfriendImage via Prime Video
The Girlfriendis one of the most fascinating thrillers of the last few years because it makes the audience second-guess whether something is even wrong in the first place. The series follows Laura (Robin Wright), a successful woman whose seemingly stable life begins to unravel after her son introduces her to his mysterious new girlfriend, Cherry (Olivia Cooke). At first, Laura’s suspicions seem irrational, but the show slowly blurs the line between love and obsession until it becomes impossible to tell who is actually manipulating whom.
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The story shifts between Laura and Cherry’s perspectives and repeatedly revisits the same events from both points of view, often with tiny inconsistencies that completely change how the audience interprets what actually happened. That constant uncertainty becomes the show’s greatest strength because viewers are never entirely sure whose version of reality they should believe. Wright and Cooke perfectly embody their complex characters, and their tense dynamic unfolds like a wildly entertaining psychological chess match. The Girlfriend keeps building this suspense until the very end, to the point where it’s impossible to stop watching because of how the audience is constantly forced to rethink what they believed earlier.
2
‘Dept. Q’ (2025–Present)
Matthew Goode as Carl Morck looking to the side slightly perplexed in Dept Q.Image via Netflix
Most crime shows try to make their detectives instantly likable, but Dept. Q does the exact opposite. The Netflix thriller introduces Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), a hardened, emotionally wrecked detective whose return to work after a traumatic shooting leaves almost everyone around him frustrated. Instead of getting back to normal police work, Carl is shoved into a forgotten basement office and assigned to lead a brand-new cold case department filled with other misfits like him. The punishment slowly evolves into one of the most gripping investigative thrillers Netflix has released in years as Carl and his team reopen the disappearance of prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), and are pulled into a complex web of political corruption and buried trauma.
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Dept. Q features a compelling mystery, but beneath that, the show is completely character-driven. Watching these emotionally fractured people learning to trust each other is the highlight of the show. The series also has this dry, almost uncomfortable sense of humor running through it that keeps the characters from becoming overly bleak. What really elevates Dept. Q, though, is its pacing. Instead of rushing through twists, the show really lets its tension stretch. By the time everything starts connecting, the investigation feels genuinely consuming, and the final reveal lingers with the audience long after the credits roll.
1
‘All Her Fault’ (2025)
Sarah Snook and Michael Peña make their way through a crowd in All Her Fault.Image via Peacock
All Her Faultwastes absolutely no time pulling viewers into its nightmarish premise. The Peacock thriller begins with Marissa Irvine (Sarah Snook) arriving to pick up her young son from a playdate, only to discover that nobody at the house has ever heard of him. From there, the series spirals into an increasingly tense mystery that constantly shifts the audience’s understanding of what’s really happening. The show does a great job of balancing its central mystery with deeply personal themes of motherhood, guilt, and the pressures of holding a family together.
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Snook delivers one of the strongest performances of her career. Her portrayal of Marissa always feels relatable, even as the story becomes increasingly chaotic. Dakota Fanning is equally compelling as Jenny, whose unlikely friendship with Marissa becomes one of the emotional anchors of the series. Nothing is as it seems in All Her Fault, though. The writing constantly forces viewers to question who can actually be trusted, especially as seemingly supportive characters slowly reveal hidden motivations and deeply messy personal histories. The series is layered, raw, and emotionally complex, which is what makes it impossible to stop binging.
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