The 18 Best Crime Dramas In TV History

The crime drama is nearly as old as television itself, with its first success, "Dragnet," making the jump from radio to the tube in the 1940s, and the genre has thrived ever since. However, while some modern shows have successfully used the format to talk about bigger things, it's a harder genre to love today.

Though enjoyed worldwide, cop and crime shows in the U.S. haven't always kept up with the culture. While most of the best examples we have can look, unflinchingly, at some of the too-optimistic portrayals of the police and discuss them, some still retain the Western-style simplistic polarity of bad guys versus good. Crime, and the societal breakage that helps it happen, is a tough topic. But it's not one we ever tire of. And throughout our media history, it's more than something our Dads love to snooze to. The crime drama will always be part of our cultural heritage. Let's take a look some of at the best examples of how it earned its place.

Less about the police than the psychology behind mystery itself, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was what you binged instead of "The Twilight Zone" if you wanted to watch people really go through it. Similar to its compatriot, this anthology series was hosted by the man himself. Hitchcock was well-established as a god-tier director when his series first aired in 1955. Of over 260 episodes, Hitch directed 17. In 1962, mystery buffs couldn't get enough and the series was retooled into "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" for another 93 episodes.

Each episode saw the director's hand-drawn caricature enter to the infamous tune of "Funeral March for a Marionette," a jangly piano piece that evokes oddball mystery. One of the best episodes, in my opinion, is "The Perfect Crime," directed by Hitchcock and starring Vincent Price. It's a tense ride as criminologist Price cobbles together said perfect crime, and it's a talkative one. For more gleeful crime fans, there's "Lamb to the Slaughter," also directed by Hitchcock and based on a — yes! — Roald Dahl story. Not to spoil the surprise, but "Hannibal" fans, this classic's for you.

Peter Falk has the right kind of gravelly voice to sound both charming and scattered. His seminal role as Lieutenant Columbo in, what else, "Columbo," takes advantage of this. Columbo acts like he's got too much Peter Sellers in him, an eccentric that bumbles his way through crime scenes for an episode's given running time. But fans who love this classic detective know it's all an act.

Well, sort of. Columbo is polite and eccentric. But he's also smart as hell, and he knows exactly how he's perceived. His targets are rich scumbags who think they've gotten away with their crime. Columbo relies on psychology as he quietly interrogates his prey, wearing their defenses down until he kills them with his signature whopper: "One more thing, sir..." Columbo always gets his man, the right man, and from the get-go. It's comforting stuff from a time when cops were as blue collar as the rest of us, keeping the elites in line. That theme may not have aged well, but the show does, purely because of Falk's immortal charm.

Cop dramas were a boys club in the '80s, and frankly, they still are. The first major attempt to attack the status quo came in 1981, as Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey took to the New York streets to show the world that solving crime has no gender. "Cagney & Lacey" fought to become a hit, surviving an early cancellation via a fan-run letter campaign.

The pair do their best to show the breadth of life experiences women can have, with Cagney as a career woman and Lacey as a working mom. The show doesn't shy away from big issues, with a toady little dude named Newman benefiting more from the old boy's network than them on the way to a promotion. Discrimination and harassment became the core of "Rules of the Game," which sees Cagney under the thumb of a controlling police captain. It's ridiculous that there's been nothing quite like "Cagney & Lacey" since, though at least great partnerships like Elliot and Stabler have become regular delights.

To look at the screenshots of one of the most popular '80s cop shows, "Miami Vice," is to invite some not so very polite giggles from today's fashionistas. Men have never worn so much pastel before or since, and we're including the Met Gala. Don Johnson as Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Tubbs fighting crime in woven sandals and white blazers is something that, you would think, does not age well. And yet it can still feel so alive.

Underneath the hood, however, "Miami Vice" will always be a Michael Mann production, and that keeps it working. With its deliberately Art Deco aesthetic, its caseload somehow still feels fresh and the fashion feels fantastical instead of dated. As part of Miami's vice squad, the perps our pastel princes are up against are drug lords and scammers. It doesn't lower the stakes, but it enhances the stylish sensation that everyone is looking to make it big off the back of someone else. Like other enduring shows, part of what works is its tasty synth theme song, a Jan Hammer special beamed in from a universe where the best of the '80s will never die.

Lost in the trove of better-known '90s mystery series is a wonderful English import called "Cadfael." Starring Sir Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael, a 12^th Century Benedictine monk, it's a rare treat for fans of the earthier, more human version of the Middle Ages we've seen in recent works like "The Green Knight."

Based on the novels of Ellis Peters, Cadfael is a former crusader and soldier, who saw Jerusalem under the reign of Baldwin I. Weary of doing harm, he turns to herbalism. Though he's Shrewsbury's foremost healer, he also becomes the local medical examiner. Local sheriff Hugh Beringar grows to appreciate the aging monk's guidance, though Cadfael's amused acceptance of the secular world often puts him at odds with his Benedictine superiors. With only 13 episodes, the often historically accurate "Cadfael" is tempting to binge. But savor it instead; there's nothing else quite like this gentle monk with a keen understanding of the world around him.

David Simon was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun when he embedded himself with the city's homicide department for the entire year of 1988. The result of his observations were chronicled in "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," one of the most nakedly truthful books about the world of murder to exist. Its adaptation went to air in 1993, its title softened to "Homicide: Life on the Street." It retained much of the book's truthfulness, however, showing the flaws and obsessions of each detective as their caseloads erode their spirits, and sometimes, their humanity.

Yaphet Kotto stars as Lieutenant Al Giardello, based on the real-life shift lieutenant Simon knew as Gary D'Addario. His crew often changed throughout the years, but among them, actors Andre Braugher ("Brooklyn Nine-Nine") and Richard Belzer ("Law & Order: SVU") stayed throughout. The crimes also remained, and the specter of Adena Watson, based on a still-unsolved slaying of a little girl named Latonya Wallace, haunted one of its detectives for the entire series run. Though the series stumbles in its final seasons, it remains one of the best crime series you've probably never watched.

Rex Stout's garrulous but insulated Nero Wolfe has undergone a number of adaptations since his debut in 1934. The best version is, easily, A&E's 2001-2002 20-episode collection of "Nero Wolfe" stories. With the late and deeply lamented Maury Chaykin as Nero and Timothy Hutton as his assistant and extroverted gopher Archie Goodwin, the pair navigate the mysteries that the stymied police delegate to them.

Nero charges the cops extravagant fees — king move, honestly — to supplement his luxurious but close-quarters lifestyle. He's not agoraphobic, he's particular. Nero's brilliance also forces his clients to put up with his ways, and deal with his gopher Archie at crime scenes and at a witness' side. When guests are permitted inside Wolfe's imposing brownstone, they are entirely at Wolfe's intellectual mercy. Jazzy and stylish, set in a dreamlike version of the '40s, "Nero Wolfe" is a terrific period drama, and a perfect blend of character and crime.

To shove bias out of the way real quick, when I talk up HBO's premier thriller series "True Detective," I mean seasons one and three. Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, respectively, tear up the first season with a decades-long mystery about a bizarre series of murders. It's a platform for the dark philosophy that hides inside crime, delving into the fringes of horror. Though viewers (like me) uplifted the Lovecraftian elements into oversized prominence, it's fairer to say season one is an exploration of the nihilistic philosophy of horror that Eugene Thacker explains in "In the Dust of This Planet."

Season three returns to that mortal terror, a generational case about missing children and our own unreliable memories. The ever-stunning Mahershala Ali is balanced by his sleazy but loyal partner Stephen Dorff, in a surprising career resurrection. The only ghosts here are the haunts of a man fighting his dementia. It's enough. The real mystery hunted in "True Detective" is how any of us can bear to be human.

If I have to sell an established crime fan on "The Wire," I honestly don't know what we're doing here. If you haven't seen it yet, you're in for something truly special. The apex evolution of the world David Simon showed us in "Homicide: Life on the Streets," HBO's "The Wire" plumbs some of those same stories to tell all new ones about the broken souls corroding the entire city of Baltimore. From bottom to top, a web of corruption ensnares everything from streetwise drug lords to the Port Authority, to the city's crumbling schools and infrastructures, and even refusing to spare the media bodies Simon himself worked for.

A wealth of fine actors inhabit the most complicated and sometimes hard to like characters in the medium. Idris Elba remains a stand-out as the Barksdale family advisor Stringer Bell. Lance Reddick is the lieutenant that catches the Barksdale special detail, our guide to the frustrating politics inside Cop HQ. Dominic West is Detective Jimmy "The f*** did I do?!" McNulty. Across five seasons, "The Wire" explores a realistic world. The series demands binging; you need to know what happens next. But take it from me. You'll probably need a long break before moving on to the next season.