The 5 Best HBO Crime Dramas, Ranked

Despite the past few years of mergers, rebranding, re-rebranding, and everything else Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav has done, HBO has held onto its reputation as the definitive home for high-quality television. The network essentially created what we now know as "prestige TV" more than 25 years ago, and while many competitors have entered the space, especially in the streaming era, modern series like "The Last of Us," "Succession," and "The White Lotus" have kept HBO on top.

Over those two and a half decades, there have been a wide range of popular shows on HBO, but no genre has defined the network quite the crime drama — the genre it built its early reputation on with back-to-back classics "The Sopranos" and "The Wire." It should be no secret that those shows tend to top most rankings of the greatest HBO shows ever. In fact, when it comes to crime dramas, it's hard to find much wiggle room within the upper echelon, as the network has been putting out such great material for so long that there are a number of absolute classics you can't really exclude.

Still, there's always the possibility for something new to push up beyond the beloved shows of the past and establish itself in the top tier. HBO has never really slowed down in its avalanche of crime series. Today, though, we're only looking at the five best HBO crime dramas.

A lot of different shows were in contention for this fifth-place spot, and because it was such a close call, I want to shout a couple of them out. If your crime inclinations lean more neo-noir, and if the North American setting of most HBO crime fare has worn thin, I strongly recommend checking out "Tokyo Vice," led by the inimitable Ken Watanabe. For single-season miniseries, both "Mare of Easttown" and "The Night Of" have delivered fantastic, challenging stories over the last few years, thanks in large part to titanic performances from Kate Winslet and Riz Ahmed, respectively,

But ultimately, "We Own This City" felt like the right pick. Seen by many as a successor to "The Wire" due to it being set in Baltimore and created by David Simon, this six-part limited series is very much its own, dark, sobering thing. Unlike "The Wire," this is a true story, with the main characters all bearing the names of their real-world counterparts. In short, the show follows the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) and its numerous instances of corruption, brutality, and abuse, led by Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal). It's a crime drama that turns the focus on crime within the police force itself, and the recency of its subject matter makes it a chilling watch, if far from a shocking one.

Bernthal turns in one of the best performances of his career across the six episodes, with great turns also coming from the likes of Wunmi Mosaku and McKinley Belcher III. This is not really an encouraging story, but it is a necessary one, and one that feels particularly relevant to include in contemporary discussions around the crime genre.

I tried to figure out a way to have something more unique at the fourth spot on this list, but it's hard to argue with "Boardwalk Empire." Often overshadowed by "Game of Thrones," which completely dominated HBO, television, and pop culture in general during the 2010s, this period-piece mob saga would have been the main draw in many other eras at HBO, and it holds up well years after it left the air.

Steve Buschemi, Kelly Macdonald, and Michael Shannon lead the way, but the extended cast is massive and filled with talent, from Stephen Graham (as Al Capone) and Bobby Cannavale to Paz de la Huerta, Charlie Cox, and Jeffrey Wright. However, it's the setting that really takes center stage and sets this series apart from other HBO crime dramas. The costuming, set dressing, and historical backdrop for the various storylines all give "Boardwalk Empire" a uniquely compelling aesthetic, blending the early 20th century crime vibe of "Peaky Blinders" with the sprawling epic format of HBO prestige TV.

Despite its acclaim during its run, "Boardwalk Empire" isn't talked about nearly as much as its contemporaries these days. However, the period piece aspect makes it a great choice for a first-time viewing no matter when you decide to check it out.

Just like "The Sopranos" changed television in 1999, "True Detective" changed the crime drama genre in 2014. Sure, its impact may have been on a much smaller scale, but over a decade later, look at all of the crime series that have popped up in its wake: "Dark Winds," "Mare of Easttown," "Mindhunter" ... the list goes on and on. Yes, there were "prestige" crime series before the first "True Detective" season that focused on single cases, dark themes, and complicated performances. (AMC's "The Killing" jumps to mind.) But "True Detective" turned that formula into TV gold.

The different seasons have been slightly hit or miss over the years, hence the bronze medal. But even though none since the flawless inaugural season have quite hit that same mark, they each have strong performances, interesting storylines, great design, and unique aesthetics, none of which are easy to pull off. Loving one season of this series doesn't guarantee that you'll love the others, and that's okay.

But to be clear, the reason this show ranks so high is because of the first season, led by two career-defining performances from Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Many have called it a perfect season of television, and while its focus is incredibly specific, it's hard to find an issue in its execution. It's dark, thematic, literary, and incredibly well-shot, and if you've never given it a go, consider this yet another endorsement.

What is there left to say about "The Sopranos" at this point? For most people, it's the clearest, most explicit starting point of the modern television era. Sure, you can talk about a handful of other shows through the '90s, and even the late '80s, that did similar things in terms of overarching storylines and cinematic sensibility, but "The Sopranos" was the clear leveling up of that concept — the beginning of what we now call, for better or worse, prestige TV.

And, yeah, it still rips. James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano is a leading performance that has been approached numerous times in the crime drama genre since by the likes of Bryan Cranston and Cillian Murphy, but never truly topped. The show also has one of the all-time great supporting casts, from Edie Falco and Lorraine Bracco to Michael Imperioli, Vincent Pastore, and Tony Sirico. There are certain elements of the early seasons that might feel somewhat dated now, but the writing, acting, and overall craft remains immaculate.

It's one thing to create a show with broad, cinematic aspirations and themes, but it's a whole other thing to do that while also completely capturing the larger culture. "The Sopranos," at its best, elevated television at the same time as it became the next big water cooler show. And when it comes to true mob stories on TV, there still has yet to be a show that takes the crown from David Chase. But in the great pantheon of HBO crime series, second place is as far as "The Sopranos" goes.

"The Wire" is, in every measurable way, the ultimate crime drama. It's a show that doesn't just use organized crime as a setting or a backdrop for some literary fall. It's a story about the very idea of crime — what it is, how we decide who to criminalize, and the effects of that on communities and families. It looks at crime from every angle: the police, local politics, organized labor, and the press, but primarily, the people born into the landscape of "crime" and treated as criminals from birth because of it.

Through the lens of Baltimore, David Simon paints what different critics have called a modern epic, the definitive crime series, and the greatest TV show ever made. There's not enough room here to relitigate any of that, and I'm not sure I'd want to. At this point, "The Wire" is an institution of television, and its continued relevance says as much about its own deftness and intelligence as it does about our failure to address major issues of policing, criminalization, and inequality in the real world.

I haven't even mentioned a single actor here, which might be because it's hard to mention one without naming them all. It's the whole ecosystem of the show — the ecosystem of "crime," as dictated by policy and financial circumstances — that makes it what it is. Every script and performance matters because of how it clicks into that whole. So yes, "The Wire" is the best crime drama that HBO has ever produced, and it remains the greatest crime TV show of all time.