The Best TV Murder Mysteries

“Sharp Objects”

When two girls are murdered in the hometown of journalist Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), more than a few ghosts call her back to town. The series was created by Marti Noxon, based on the novel by Gillian Flynn and directed with Jean-Marc Vallée’s eye for marrying the aesthetic and the unsettling. While falling back into an unhealthy dynamic with mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson), Patricia also connects with Detective Richard Willis (Chris Messina) and with her half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen) who both reminds Camille of and ties her to the murdered girls. With immense performances by the entire cast, mesmerizing visuals, and an ending we’ll never forget, “Sharp Objects” rewired the TV murder mystery for the 2010s and set an impressive bar. —PK

“Top of the Lake”

Technically a missing-person mystery more than a murder-mystery, Jane Campion’s two-season detective saga is another excellent example of how the genre has evolved (inch by inch) toward giving voice to the voiceless, rather than glorifying cops and killers alike. Elisabeth Moss plays Aussie detective Robin Griffin, whose visit home is interrupted by the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl named Tui (Jacqueline Joe). Her father, Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan), is a local drug runner, and his resistance to cooperating with the cops only makes Robin’s job that much harder. So, too, does the emergence of a women’s retreat, run by GJ (Holly Hunter) to help abused women recover, regroup, and reclaim their lives. It’s not that the collective carries a dark, ulterior motive, but that its presence triggers both Mitcham (who doesn’t want them on his land) and Robin, who has her own neglected trauma to deal with.

Robin’s history in the remote mountain town soon becomes inseparable from the rest of her investigation. Campion doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, whether it’s illustrating misogyny in the home, the workplace, or the greater culture at large, and each manifestation of a rotten core belief only gets uglier and uglier as Robin tries to keep one young life from becoming another glossed-over statistic in a crime blotter. That all this happens in a golden, almost ethereal Australian locale, shot with a unique blend of atmospheric intensity and serenity by Adam Arkapaw, adds to the power of a story impossible to shake. —BT

“True Detective: Night Country”

Issa López’s fourth installment of the series created by Nic Pizzolatto takes place in the eerie winter of Ennis, Alaska, where the sun doesn’t shine for months on end. There, Detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) comes across the bodies of a group of scientists frozen in the ice. Their mysterious death sets of alarm bells in the mind of Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who remembers an unsolved murder the duo tackled years prior, of a local Iñupiaq woman with her tongue cut out. López’s female led vehicle flips “True Detective” formula on its head and deftly weaves the two crimes together over a gripping six-episode season. —PK

“Twin Peaks: The Return”

Is “Twin Peaks: The Return” a murder-mystery? David Lynch’s original seasons certainly qualify, as Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was called to the weird Washington town to ascertain who killed Laura Palmer. But that answer arrived long before Showtime revived the cult favorite franchise for one of this century’s most challenging, enigmatic TV shows. Smashing together genres with even more glee than the initial run, Lynch’s 18-episode masterpiece maintained the assuredness that allowed “Twin Peaks” to elicit simultaneous, often contradictory, emotions at once — reactions not often found in other stories within the genre. Maybe you can’t stop laughing at Dougie’s stunted attempts to communicate, but there could still be lingering sympathy, even sorrow, underlying MacLachlan’s deft physical comedy. Maybe you felt scared for him. Maybe after one too many episodes without a clear indication of what the hell was happening to Dougie — as Agent Cooper came to be known — he started to represent a mystery unto himself.

By the series’ end, when Laura Palmer fulfills the promise in the revival’s title, it’s clear that this new “Twin Peaks” isn’t the old “Twin Peaks,” and yet it’s still searching, still yearning, still driven to solve mysteries so inscrutable they may only make sense in our dreams. Yes, “Twin Peaks: The Return” is a murder-mystery. For one thing, someone dies in every episode. For another, arguably more significant reason, it’s a surreal murder-mystery with Dale and Dougie at its center. Fans were both enamored and frustrated at Dale’s muted mutation in “The Return,” and speculation ran wild over what happened to him, when the real Dale would come back, and if he ever would. Dale, Dougie, and their doppelganger (an overtly evil version of Cooper) are the question in need of answering; the hero and victim in one, trapped within a murder-mystery gives itself over to the unknowable. Can we ever really solve the precious, peculiar puzzles of life, or the nonsensical finality of death, let alone the seemingly random connective tissue of everything in between? “Twin Peaks: The Return” gives an answer, and you can’t really blame it for saying “yes” and “no” at once. —BT

“Mare of Easttown”

A show that leans heavily into the tormented detective trope, Brad Ingelsby’s drama brought Kate Winslet to the small screen with a Philadelphia accent and that’s something no other TV show ever has or will achieve. Winslet’s titular Mare is investigating a recent murder as well as one she couldn’t solve a year ago, while untangling her family dynamics, grieving her son, and fighting for time with her grandson. The cast includes Jean Smart, Evan Peters, Angourie Rice, Guy Pearce, Cailee Spaeny and more, with all seven episodes masterfully directed by Craig Zobel. —PK

“Under the Bridge”

This Hulu drama developed by Quinn Shepherd is one of the streamer’s best, and based on the book by Rebecca Godfrey. It tells the devastating true story of Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta), a Canadian teen who went missing in 1997 and was found dead shortly after. Detective Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone) investigates while Godfrey herself (played by Riley Keough) gets acquainted with Reena’s so-called friends, a group of troubled young people with a history of bullying and substance abuse. Gupta and the rest of the young cast are outstanding, as are the adults including Archie Panjabi and Ezra Faroque Khan as Reena’s parents. —PK

“The Staircase”

Dramatizations of crimes that have already been heavily reported on can feel like egregious double-dips. In 2022, Max’s take on “The Staircase” — a six-part French-language documentary about the murder of Kathleen Peterson — looked a lot like that from far away. And yet, somehow, creator Antonio Campos managed to pull off a well-justified reexamination of the 48-year-old North Carolina woman’s death, turning meta-components about the making of that controversial documentary into an integral part of his drama.Max’s “The Staircase” is remembered in part for its graphic depictions of the various theories in this case. Even forced to embraced her horror chops in a tragic circumstance, Toni Collette delivers a wonderfully sensitive performance as Kathleen. Colin Firth stars as the slippery Michael Peterson, a crime novelist who was convicted of his wife’s murder via Alford plea in 2017. Michael’s scandal-ridden trial, which included accusations of serious misconduct on both sides, is a focal point in both versions. Although it’s not worth watching the original if you haven’t already, those who have seen the documentary will appreciate Michael Stuhlbarg’s incredible performance as attorney David Rudolf. —AF

“Under the Banner of Heaven”

There’s a moment in nearly every great murder mystery, when the heroes — police, witnesses, or otherwise — realize that something about the crime they’re investigating is more awful than anyone could have ever imagined. Hulu and FX’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” stretches that revelation into an agonizing trial of belief for Jeb Pryre (Andrew Garfield), an LDS Detective tasked with protecting a god-fearing community in Utah. It’s a stunning performance from Garfield, who earned an Emmy nod for the part. It’s also a testament to the timeless artistic potential that can still be drawn from reexamining religion as blind faith.The charitable beliefs of Mormonism buck against humanity’s tangible evils in this true crime retelling, based on author Jon Krakauer’s work of nonfiction from 2003. In 1984, Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her one-year-old daughter Erica were killed in a brutal slashing. Created by Dustin Lance Black, the 2022 miniseries is disturbing but told delicately — ferreting out the killer while, on a deeper level, encouraging audiences to explore the societal ills that allowed for a tragedy so sick. —AF

“Big Little Lies” (Season 1)

HBO’s “Big Little Lies” Season 2 spirals off into this whole Nicole Kidman crying vs. Meryl Streep screaming family court drama thing that’s pretty entertaining — but not a murder mystery. The original planned miniseries, however, remains a triumph of the small-screen whodunit, featuring a cast so star-studded that filmmaker Rian Johnson could (and maybe should?) copy-paste them into the next Knives Out.Based on author Liane Moriarty’s novel, “Big Little Lies” works much like its prestige network’s later “White Lotus.” At a lavish fundraiser for an intensely political elementary school in Monterey, California, someone gets killed by someone. Over seven episodes, you’ll watch a slew of brilliant seriocomic actors — Reese Witherspoon, Adam Scott, Laura Dern, and more — leave clues for the identities of both the killer and the victim as a pack of truly awful parents mingle their way to certain doom. —AF

“The Fall”

Historically, many of the best murder-mysteries have focused on the cops and the criminals. The victims tend to be more of a specter hovering over the investigation, either serving as motivation for the avenging detective or better explaining the nuanced complexities of the killer. Well, Stella Gibson isn’t here for any of that shit. Played by the great Gillian Anderson, a master of no-bullshit authority figures, her senior officer in “The Fall” isn’t simply there to find the killer and bring him to justice. She’s also there to empower the victims and would-be victims; to explain the psychology of their tormentor so they can protect themselves; to put innocent people, often women, over selfish abusers (often men).

That “The Fall” manages to do this while still dedicating much of its time to the perceptively named Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) is a testament to its greater ambitions. Not merely a mystery, nor a thriller, the three-season series grapples with the inner lives of those pursuing and pursued by Paul, the misogyny driving his behavior, and the broader systems at play that can support or create such so-called monsters. Moody, cerebral, yet consistently gripping, “The Fall” is a murder-mystery that will reframe your interpretation of other murder-mysteries, which makes it all the more valuable an addition to any true crime fan’s streaming queue. —BT