5 TV Shows To Watch If You Like Nemesis

Netflix's newest crime drama, "Nemesis," saw its first season hit the streamer on May 14. It follows an LAPD lieutenant named Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law) who has let his chase of prolific thief Coltrane Wilder (Y'lan Noel) completely consume him. The battle of wits plays out via a satisfying slow burn across the eight episodes of Season 1, which has brought the show both critical praise and over 1 billion total minutes streamed so far.

As "Nemesis" was co-created by Courtney A. Kemp, who also co-created Starz's "Power" universe, it's easy enough to point "Nemesis" fans to other crime drama shows like "Power." And you'll certainly get a lot of the same vibes by going that route. But we think people who want more shows like "Nemesis" will be specifically searching for other carefully-paced crime thrillers that center around an ongoing cat and mouse game between the main protagonist and antagonist of the show. These five shows all deliver exactly that. 

Unfortunately only getting one season on NBC in 2022, "The Endgame" also ended on a huge cliffhanger that adds it to the list of TV shows that will never be completed. But if you can overlook the fact that you won't ever see a true resolution to the tale, you will find a tightly written crime drama that will still keep you enthralled in spite of it ending mid-story.

Like "Nemesis," the villain of "The Endgame" is a person who just pulled off a bunch of impressive heists, and is now in the crosshairs of a very determined law enforcement officer. In this case, the thief is Elena Federova, who is played by actor Monica Baccarin as if she's auditioning to be a Roger Moore-era Bond villain — and we mean that as a compliment. In her pursuit is FBI agent Val Turner (Ryan Michelle Bathé), who becomes obsessed with catching Federova and playing her twisted, cryptic games. If only we could've had more of it. 

"The Day of the Jackal" originated as a 1971 novel, was adapted into a 1973 film, and is now a television show on Peacock. Not only does the show move the action to the modern day — with all the advances in technology that come with it — but it also features a deeper focus on character building and isn't afraid to get much more political than the original novel or movie.

Eddie Redmayne plays Alexander Duggan, an assassin known to clients only as The Jackal. When he's offered a job with a lot more risks and complications than he usually accepts, he reluctantly takes the contract as it promises to pay him enough money to retire from the murdering business. But a complication he didn't plan for is that it would get him wrapped up in a complex game of cat and mouse with an MI6 agent (Lashana Lynch, the first female 007) — a game that ends up getting more personal than either of them bargained for. 

Speaking of cat and mouse games that got way too personal, "Killing Eve" has entered the chat. While it starts off like most other crime thrillers do — an investigator's investigation quickly takes over their entire life — it isn't long before it's made clear that the cat and mouse game in "Killing Eve" is going to go a whole other level. A sexy level, in fact.

Eve's (Sandra Oh) career as an MI5 agent doesn't pan out, but she's soon secretly scooped up by MI6 when her proclivity for female agents makes her the perfect person to investigate a dangerous assassin known as Villanelle (Jodie Comer). As Eve tracks her, the two eventually meet in person — and it's immediately obvious that they aren't going to be able to avoid mixing business with pleasure, as it were. Even if you have already binged the show, there are things you only in "Killing Eve" on a rewatch, so it's as good a time as any to run through it again. 

Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) sometimes struggles to keep her bipolar disorder from interfering with her job as a CIA officer. More to the point, it causes a lot of her colleagues and superiors to not always trust her judgment — which becomes a huge issue when Carrie becomes convinced that a former Marine was turned into a sleeper agent while he was captured by al-Qaeda.

So is Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) really a secret terrorist who poses a massive threat to the security of the United States, or is it just Carrie's paranoia run amok? We won't spoil it for you if you haven't watched "Homeland," Showtime's eight-time Primetime Emmy winning series that will leave you utterly captivated from beginning to end. Even being stretched out to eight seasons, "Homeland" never experiences any major dips in quality — when ranking every "Homeland" season worst to best, the lowest ranked season is merely good instead of great. 

We end this list with a cat and mouse crime drama that depicts a real life cat and mouse game between an actual drug lord and DEA agent. Okay, so Netflix's "Narcos" is obviously a highly dramatized depiction of the war between Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) and federal agent Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook). It follows Escobar between the late '70s and early '90s, chronicling his rise as a drug kingpin to his eventual death — sorry, but it's not really a spoiler alert when it's about a real person who died over 30 years ago.

But the ways "Narcos" stretches the truth is in service of a thrilling, action-packed crime epic that sees Escobar and Agent Murphy go round and round in one of the most exciting cat and mouse games the genre has ever seen. Not only are all three seasons of "Narcos" excellent, there was also a great spin-off totally worth your time called "Narcos: Mexico" that digs into a little more of what went on within Escobar's empire in the '80s.