16 Must-Watch British Crime Shows to Watch Right Now (June 2025)

It’s been a while since Netflix has had a solid crime drama from the United Kingdom, but that drought is finally over with Dept. Q. Downton Abbey star Matthew Goode plays Carl Morck, an emotionally damaged British detective assigned to lead Department Q, which deals with cold cases no one else can solve. Carl, along with his quirky team of investigators and forensic scientists, must now catch murderers and criminals who have escaped justice for years.

Dept. Q isn’t just a watered-down CSI clone; instead, it’s a surprisingly involving mystery show that cares much about the relationships between its investigators as it does in spinning a good crime yarn. The show features a stellar cast of Scottish and British actors, including Kelly Macdonald as Morck’s well-meaning therapist, but it’s Goode who dominates the show with his haunted detective. 

John Chapel (Harry Potter actor Timothy Spall) fears his best days are behind him. A beloved actor best known for playing a popular detective on TV, his retirement has so far proven to be a bit dull and uninspiring. But when John’s neighbor turns up dead, he’s inspired to solve the case himself. He’s helped by Detective Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth), who actually has experience solving crimes, and together, the duo solves numerous crimes in and around their sleepy Welsh village.

It’s a classic British crime show set-up, and while Death Valley doesn’t radically change the genre, it pretty much perfects it. Much of the show’s success is due to Spall, one of Britain’s great character actors, who imbues Chapel with enough complexity and charm to make him stand out from all the other English amateur sleuths. The first season consists of six tidy episodes, and the show’s ratings success guarantees it will come back for at least another season.

You can always rely on the British to produce a mystery series worth watching, and they don’t disappoint with I, Jack Wright. The new BritBox show concerns the apparent suicide of the titular character, who manages to surprise his grieving family from beyond the grave by leaving most of them out of his will.

Why did Jack (Trevor Eve) seemingly screw over the family he loved when he was alive? And is his suspicious death somehow related to his decision to leave them with nothing? Jack Wright eventually answers those questions by the time it wraps up its mystery, but the main pleasure in watching this six-episode series is getting to its inevitable conclusion. 

Riversend is an idyllic small town in Australia where everyone knows each other and no one feels unsafe. That’s why it’s so shocking when a priest, Father Swift (Jay Ryan), guns down five parishioners one day after church. A year later, journalist Martin Scarsden (Luke Arnold) wants to know what drove Swift to do such an unspeakable act. But Martin’s investigation turns up some secrets that are better left buried, and soon, he fears he may be the next person to die in Riversend.

Scrublands is a mystery that reveals its killer right away — Father Swift. But it’s the reasons behind the priest’s actions that fuel the story and push Martin into danger to find out the truth. Scrublands’ first season is only four episodes long, but that’s just long enough for it to tell an absorbing mystery with a shocking ending. The show recently returned for season 2 and focuses on Martin’s return to his hometown, which also holds secrets no one wants revealed.

What would you do if someone you loved disappeared? That’s what Eliza Blix (Andor‘s Denise Gough) experiences when she picks up her daughter Lucia (Beatrice Cohen) after a sleepover at a friend’s house and can’t find her. She can’t find her friend’s family either, and she eventually discovers that the house was a rental and that no one permanently lives there.

Where is Lucia? And why would anyone want to kidnap her for seemingly no reason? The Stolen Girl is a captivating five-episode mystery series that explores every parent’s worst nightmare. As Eliza, Gough is superb as a mother who is desperate for answers. She may find them by talking to her husband Fred (Jim Sturgess), who knows more than he’s willing to tell.

In the mood for a good, old-fashioned thriller involving the rich and immoral? If yes, then BritBox has another mystery worth watching — and solving. Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero is a three-episode series that adapts the 1944 novel of the same name. Anjelica Huston stars as Lady Tressilian, a rich widow who invites some guests to her seaside property for a house party. When an old family friend is found murdered, suspicion naturally falls on the party’s guests, which include a disgraced tennis star (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and his new wife (Mimi Keene). Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys) has his hands full, and he’ll have to act quickly before the murderer strikes again.

Towards Zero is a surprisingly risque adaptation (expect some steamy sex scenes) that is nonetheless largely faithful to the book’s main plot. Huston is fun to watch playing a snobby rich lady with daggers for eyes while Jackson-Cohen is appropriately dashing as one of the suspects. 

A fire at a swanky vacation houseboat, a love triangle involving an older man and two teenage girls and a podcaster investigating a person who has been missing for years — none of these things seem related to one another. Yet, by the time The Jetty concludes its superb four-episode first season, Detective Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman) will somehow tie all of them together in a tricky mystery that’s one of British TV’s best of 2024.

Coleman stars as Manning, who must deal with her own personal issues — she’s a widow, and her pre-teen daughter is starting to smoke — while also trying to solve several mysteries simultaneously. Similar to Happy Valley, The Jetty examines violence occurring in a bucolic setting and features a dynamite lead female performance from Coleman. 

It’s no spoiler to reveal that Ruth Ellis (Lucy Boynton), the lead character in the new four-episode crime show A Cruel Love,  died by hanging on July 13, 1955. Ruth was a real woman who committed a very real crime: She shot her lover, David Blakely (Laurie Davidson), on Easter the year of her death. But what led the nightclub hostess to carry out such a horrible act?

That’s the question behind A Cruel Love, BritBox’s excellent true-crime drama that explores Ruth’s motivations behind David’s murder, the subsequent trial that dominated the tabloid press and her death by execution, which is still the last time a woman was put to death for her crimes in the United Kingdom. 

This story has been told before, most notably in the 1985 film Dance with a Stranger, but never as absorbing and detailed as it is here. As Ellis, Boynton is never better playing a woman left with few options in life. The show convincingly evokes a period when scandal could ruin reputations and a crime of passion could captivate a still-innocent public.

Dating apps are the worst, but for Detective Inspector Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar), they could be deadly. When she finds a former boyfriend — who she thought had died over a decade ago — alive, well and looking for love on one of these apps, it sends her down a path that will force her to confront some dark secrets in her past. 

Missing You is adapted from the novel by Harlan Coben, an American crime novelist behind several hit Netflix mysteries like Fool Me Once and Stay Close. Missing You offers similar pleasures: a protagonist traumatized by her past, a mystery with several twists and turns and several talented British actors who are largely unknown to Americans. With only five episodes, the series doesn’t overstay its welcome, and the ending is satisfying enough to make you look forward to the next Coben adaptation.

After his wife and daughter die tragically in a fire, Detective John Ridley (Adrian Dunbar) is forced into early retirement following a nervous breakdown. Eighteen months later, he’s back to help his former co-workers, but does he still have what it takes to solve mysteries? And, specifically, the curious cases of a murdered sheep farmer, a dead body that’s found on the moors and a cold case involving the disappearance of a young man 40 years ago?

Ridley is a run-of-the-mill British crime show that’s executed exceptionally well. The show spotlights the pastoral beauty of the English countryside and is just the right amount of moody to be cozy without becoming menacing. Dunbar is excellent as the haunted detective, and his frequent trips to the local jazz club to belt out a tune or two are a welcome wrinkle in an otherwise straightforward procedural.

You don’t become the so-called “Godmother” of the British criminal underworld by being nice. Joan Hannington (Sophie Turner) is a single mother with too many responsibilities and not enough money to handle them all. In desperation, she turns to a life of crime in order to take care of her daughter and her debts. It’s easy for her, since she has a photographic memory and a talent for mimicry. But will Joan’s newfound taste for luxury, furs and jewels be her downfall?

As Joan, Turner gets to flex all her dramatic muscles without the aid of a dragon or a CGI phoenix. Armed with ’80s-era bangs and giant shoulder pads, her Joan is a warrior marching on a different kind of battlefield — one filled with lowlifes whom she can’t really trust. Maybe it’s not that different from her time on Game of Thrones after all. 

Murder shows with priests are more common than you think, and they don’t get much better than Grantchester. The long-running series, which began in 2014 and is currently on its ninth season, focuses on the unlikely crime-solving duo of Detective Geordie Keating (Robson Green) and the vicar of Grantchester. Sidney Chambers (James Norton) was the first and best priest/sleuth, but his successors, Will Davenport (Tom Brittney) and Alphy Kotterman (Rishi Nair), are just as likable and dashing. 

The show follows a standard formula — someone finds a dead body in or around Grantchester and Geordie and Sidney/Will/Alphy catch the culprit. The crimes are pretty routine and the mysteries aren’t all that complex, but the show’s 1950s-to-1960s period setting is evocative, and the cast is uniformly excellent. You may question the unusually high body count of a sleepy English village, but you won’t regret bingeing a season or two in one sitting. It’s that charming.

No one writes a better crime novel than Alan Conway (Conleth Hill). He knows that, which makes him insufferable. His editor, Susan Reyland (Lesley Manville), puts up with him because he sells a lot of books. But when Alan is found dead and the police deem it a suicide, she becomes suspicious. Alan would never do that — he loved himself too much. But who would end his life? And why?

Magpie Murders has a central mystery that is genuinely intriguing and a cast of appropriately shady suspects. But it’s Manville who is the chief reason to watch the show. She’s one of Britain’s best actors working today, and she’s funny and clever as the nonplussed Susan. A sequel series, Moonflower Murders, was released in 2024, and it’s also worth a look.

Buckinghamshire is one of those quaint English villages where people go for rest, relaxation and maybe a cup of tea. But murder? That’s what retired archaeologist Judith (Samantha Bond), dog walker Suzie (Jo Martin) and vicar’s wife Becks (Cara Horgan) discover one sunny afternoon. But who left the dead body floating in the river? Before the trio can even answer, another corpse turns up. Is there a serial killer on the prowl?

The Marlow Murder Club won’t win any points for realism or originality, but this kind of show needs to be credible enough to be entertaining without anyone bothering to question its logic. It’s a stereotypically “cozy” British crime series in the best possible sense, and former James Bond star Bond gets a rare lead role to showcase her underappreciated talents.

Adam Dalgliesh ranks along with Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes as one of England’s most beloved detectives, yet he’s largely unknown in America. That will hopefully change with Dalgliesh, a new crime series on Acorn TV. Stage actor Bertie Carvel embodies P.D. James’ brainy sleuth this time around, and he has his hands full in a series of mysteries set in the 1970s.

A brutal murder at a seminary, a politically-motivated crime among an upper-class family and a mystery involving an unusual hospital are just some of the cases Dalgliesh has to crack, and Carvel provides enough appeal to make you invested in the detective’s investigations. Like the novels it’s based on, Dalgliesh is more highbrow than your average crime show, but it provides the same thrills viewers expect from the genre. The show just aired its third season in 2024.

A pizza delivery man, Abdullah Asif (Sam Otto), is shot and killed in southwest London, and almost no one seems to care. Detective Kip Glaspie (Carey Mulligan) is the exception and thinks Abdullah’s death is more than just a random act of violence. Her assumption proves to be correct, as Kip’s investigation leads her to uncover a complex web that connects the police, politicians and human traffickers.  

Collateral is shorter than your average crime series, but it packs a lot in its four episodes. In her pursuit to find Abdullah’s killer, Kip interrogates members of Parliament, a female vicar with something to hide and several MI5 agents to find out who killed him and why. 

With an intelligent script by playwright David Hare and a bravura lead performance by Mulligan, Collateral is a rarity — a politically-minded crime drama that will leave you a bit unsettled after it’s over.