5 Best Crime Shows Of The 21st Century, Ranked

This article contains discussions of addiction, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

Who doesn't love a good crime drama? Dark as this genre might be, it endures for a reason; getting engaged with mysteries, watching cops and detectives take down bad guys, and seeing some of the most heinous acts that can be committed against another person from the safety of your own living room lets you dabble in darkness but ultimately remain completely unharmed is weirdly satisfying. Plus, in crime dramas, there's usually some form of justice served, which can provide neat closure for the story. Even if that doesn't happen and the fictional perpetrators get away, it can be oddly cathartic to feel that along with the protagonists on screen.

True crime and crime dramas are, to be clear, extremely different: true crime is a massive genre in its own right, but it's based on real events (hence the word "true") and are either presented as gripping documentaries, thinly-veiled fictional stories, or even small-screen biopics (Ryan Murphy's controversial "Monster" anthology series, which centers a different serial killer in each season, fits this description). So which crime dramas that either started or aired during the 21st century are the best of the best?

Winnowing this list down was, honestly, hard — and a lot of great shows didn't make the cut. (Honorable mentions include "Mare of Easttown," "Peaky Blinders," "Mindhunter," and "Better Call Saul," just to name a few.) These five, though, are pretty unimpeachably great — and while some are new and some are quite established, each of these five shows changed the game in some notable way, and a few of them paved the way for great crime dramas that followed. Here are the five best crime drama TV shows of the 21st century, ranked.

The newest entry on this list, "Furious" — created by Liz Meriwether, the wildly versatile showrunner known for "New Girl," "The Dropout," and "Dying for Sex" — is such a fresh, unique, and wholly original take on well-trod material that it had to be included here. When we first meet Emmy Rossum's Alice Black, she's working a boring gig as a desk agent as a newcomer to the FBI when she's unexpectedly pulled into a case by her old NYPD partner Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy), ultimately bringing the head of the FBI's sex crimes unit Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine, absolutely incredible) into the fray. The case in question involves a young woman named Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew), a victim of sex trafficking and longtime sexual assault — pretty much all of which occurred, sickeningly, when she was a minor — who's finding all the men that brutalized her and killing them with fatal overdoses.

Female serial killers are somewhat rare in crime dramas, and Petticrew's Catherine is a violent, grinning, horribly childish tour-de-force (the actor imbues the character with a perverse innocence that makes it completely clear that Catherine never truly got the chance to grow up and is, in many ways, actually still a child). Add in Alice's own past trauma — abuse at the hands of her cop ex-boyfriend Marshall Connelly (Jake Lacy) and sexual abuse in her early teenage years that comes to light partway through the show's inaugural season — and the game changes considerably. Yes, Alice is chasing Catherine and trying to bring her to justice, but she also understands her on a deep, molecular level.

"Furious" is, true to its name, infuriating — and it's also a brutal, necessary watch. It might be the new kid on the crime drama block, but it's earned its place on this list.

Okay, here's the thing. "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" — the crown jewel of Dick Wolf's small-screen cinematic universe and one of the most successful spin-offs in TV history after it took its format from "Law & Order" — technically started airing in 1999, shortly before the advent of the 21st century. With that said, it's far too important not to include here, because "Special Victims Unit," which focuses on a New York police unit that investigates sex crimes and crimes against children, is the undisputed champion of crime dramas and has largely defined the genre throughout the 21st century.

Since the show's inception, Mariska Hargitay's calm, soothing, and extraordinarily capable Olivia Benson (who's been elevated from detective to captain over the years) leads the pack of detectives who investigate these, as the spoken-word introduction puts it, "heinous crimes." Sometimes, "Special Victims Unit" rips its crimes straight from the headlines, like an episode based on allegations made against the immersive Manhattan show "Sleep No More," one about the 2008 "pregnancy pact" formed by teenagers in Massachusetts, and one that introduces a serial killer nicknamed "RDK" ("Rape, Dismember, Kill"), an obvious stand-in for the infamous BTK Killer ("Bind, Torture, Kill"). Sometimes, "Special Victims Unit" invents stories out of whole cloth, and honestly, storylines that put Benson herself in danger are less welcome. Still, ask anyone who's ever happily binged a marathon of "Special Victims Unit" — it's strangely soothing to watch Benson and her team take down truly evil people, and there's no question that a show as long-running and popular as "Special Victims Unit" belongs on a list of the 21st century's most vital crime dramas.

Another caveat here: the quality of "True Detective" does, admittedly, vary pretty wildly, but let's consider the show's first season as one of the greats — and that, at the very least, deserves this spot. Created by Nic Pizzolatto, this anthology series centers a different group of detectives solving a different crime in a different location with each season, and in that pitch-perfect first season (beautifully directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga), we see detectives Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) across two timelines in deep Louisiana as they work to solve one murder in 1995 and then reunite to solve mysteries that arise from that murder a decade later. The first season of "True Detective" is uniquely twisted, horrifying, and compulsively watchable, and it builds to a truly shocking and devastating ending. (Plus, unsurprisingly, McConaughey and Harrelson are really, really good.)

Sadly, Season 2 of "True Detective" is ... not good, and completely wastes otherwise great performers like Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell on a plotline that seems to be mostly about a corrupt railway deal in California. Season 3 picks things up pretty nicely with two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali investigte the disappearance of two children in the Ozarks, and Season 4, subtitled "Night Country," moves the action to Alaska, enlists new showrunner Issa López, and brings in Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as two detectives attempting to figure out why someone mysteriously vanished from a remote research station in the frozen wilderness. Again, mileage varies with "True Detective," but when this show is firing on all cylinders, it's the best of the best.

How many times have you been at a party or gathering of some kind and someone's said, "Have you ever watched 'The Wire?'" Probably a lot, right? Well, if you haven't watched "The Wire," consider this your sign to start the deeply influential series created by David Simon that, infuriatingly and astonishingly, never won a single solitary Emmy Award despite being uniformly excellent. Simon's previous experience as a police reporter served him well creating "The Wire," a show set in Baltimore that centers around the city's criminal underbelly and how it interacts with law enforcement. That's, honestly, what makes Simon's interrogation of an American city's constant struggles so great; the cops on "The Wire" aren't always the good guys, and the drug kingpins aren't always the bad guys. Everything comes in shades of gray, and it makes for the best possible version of this particular story.

Throughout its five season run on HBO that spanned 60 episodes, "The Wire" featured some of the best actors around, including a young Michael B. Jordan (whose character is tragically killed in one of the show's most gutting moments), Dominic West as the conflicted cop Jimmy McNulty, and Idris Elba's businessman and drug dealer Stringer Bell. "The Wire" is also home to two all-timer performances from two actors we lost far too soon: Michael K. Williams, who played low-rent criminal Omar Little, and Lance Reddick, who played police lieutenant Cedric Daniels. Not only is "The Wire" a perfect series and one of the best crime dramas of all time — let alone of the 21st century — but now, it's a living memorial to two incredible performers whose careers were cut too short.

Nothing but "Breaking Bad" could possibly top this list of the best 21st century crime dramas. Vince Gilligan's ode to the average struggling American — in the form of a high school chemistry teacher and quietly brilliant scientist named Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who starts making and selling crystal meth to help pay medical bills for his terminal cancer diagnosis — is, like "The Wire," just one of the best crime dramas ever made, and it looms large over all other 21st century picks.

If you've seen AMC's "Breaking Bad," you get it. Watching the performance of a lifetime from Cranston as a man who starts a criminal lifestyle out of desperation but eventually comes to love it — and is aided by fellow criminal Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) — is truly one of the best character arcs in television history. By the time you get to the end of "Breaking Bad," it's truly gutting to see how much Walt has devolved and allowed himself to be corrupted, even as his family abandons him and he leaves blood and destruction in his wake. Also, without "Breaking Bad," we wouldn't have "Better Call Saul" — so it deserves every accolade and then some.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).