The rec list: Detective shows you need to watch right now

Detective mysteries tend to flourish during times of chaos. Just as readers made Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple explode in popularity after the first World War, we turn to this genre during this pandemic-fueled period of global uncertainty.

Perhaps we find comfort in a world where evil masterminds have motives for their crimes and where—with intelligence, logical thinking and elbow grease—monstrosities can be solved and explained. 

It’s likely you’ve finished BBC’s Sherlock, devoured Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s backlist and maybe even browsed through the Sherlock Holmes/John Watson tag on AO3. Now what? What will fill the Sherlock-shaped void in your soul? 

For a strict interpretation of the detective genre, we looked for shows that focused on a case or mystery of the week, rather than season-long hunts for one criminal (so that took out promising candidates such as The Fall, Broadchurch, The Good Detective and The Alienist).

We also hoped to recommend shows that were a bit more progressive in their outlook (sorry, Perry Mason mangst and the colonial gaze of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). We also couldn’t find Elementary legally streaming anywhere. 

Fortunately, that narrowed down our list to a handful of shows we can wholeheartedly recommend as giving great mysteries and a little something more.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Streaming on: Netflix
Seasons: 3

For sheer style, substance and crackling sexual tension, nothing beats Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, the Australian TV series that originally ran from 2012-2015 and gained a devoted following on streaming.

The show, based on Kerry Greenwood’s novels, stars the Honorable Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis—digression, whom I’d first encountered in The Babadook and did not recognize here at all), who returns to Melbourne after several years abroad.

Wearing the best in 1920s flapper fashion, Phryne takes a gorgeous house, hires a butler and immediately finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery via the death of a friend’s husband. So begins her new career as a detective, which brings her into the orbit of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). 

Phryne and Jack initially clash but their relationship turns into one of mutual respect, as Jack learns that Phryne—far from the dilettante he initially suspects—is actually a skilled detective.

They also, to put it delicately, badly want to shag each other senseless. But they can’t! Jack is a divorced and devout man who doesn’t know if he can survive her madcap life. Phryne, meanwhile, is #goals: competent at nearly everything she puts her mind to, happily getting in and out of trouble, openly sensual, and doesn’t care for the word ‘shame.’

She’s too modern for Jack, yet recognizes something grounding in his solidity—and something fiery in his staid exterior. Essie Davis and Nathan Page elevate longing glances and double entendres into works of art, making the three season-long slow burn extremely enjoyable. 

With a heroine so modern, it’s not surprising that Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is so progressive, especially with women’s issues. Episodes touch on abortion, the medical care of women (inevitably diagnosed with hysteria), sexual politics, and self-actualization. The latter is wonderfully portrayed in the character arc of Dot (Ashleigh Cummings), who starts the series as a maid too scared to answer the phone and blossoms into a confident assistant detective under Phryne’s wing.

Dot is part of the cast of fun supporting characters that enhances Miss Fisher. While Jack is ably assisted by Constable Hugh Collins, who has his own slow-burn thing going on with Dot, Phryne has her unflappable butler, Mr. Butler, her friend Mac, a doctor at a women’s hospital, and a pair of communists, Burt and Cec, who happily pitch in when needed. Not-so-helpful but loads of fun is Miriam Margolyes, who pops in from time to time as the disapproving Aunt Prudence.

Add inventive, difficult-to-solve mysteries and you have a show so loveable, fans financed its follow-up movie, Miss Fisher and The Crypt of Tears (2020).

Miss Sherlock

Streaming on: HBO Go
Seasons: 1

This co-production of HBO and Hulu is set in Tokyo and stars Yuko Takeuchi as Miss Sherlock, and Shihori Kanjiya as Dr. Wato Tachibana in an all-female adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. 

The series opens with Wato returning to Japan after volunteering in Syria. Her mentor meets her at the airport—only for their reunion to be cut short when the doctor implodes (quite literally). The incident brings Wato into contact with the police and a woman called Sherlock, a consulting detective. 

Wato’s hotel burns down and Sherlock’s brother Kento Futaba, the Prime Minister’s secretary, decides that it’d be good for her to move in with his sister, and so begins this inventive take on the Holmes/Watson odd couple dynamic. 

Sherlock is eccentric and has no regard for social norms, which somehow seems ten times more transgressive when set in polite Japan. Wato is sweet and socially adept, yet works a series of odd jobs after her traumatic experiences as a war zone doctor shakes her self-belief.

Sherlock insists that Wato isn’t her friend, and Wato, while protesting Sherlock’s disregard for etiquette and bleak worldview, sticks around to solve mysteries with her. 

Takeuchi, as Sherlock, is willowy and charming, clad in designer togs, killer heels and a Tom Ford bag, with a winning smile that almost lets her get away with any rudeness. Kanjiya plays Wato with a pleasant Uniqlo/Muji veneer that slowly unravels as her trauma is explored. (The fashion choices are great visual shortcuts to the characters, especially when Sherlock tosses a bloodstained Hermes coat because Wato’s post-college look offends her aesthetic sensibilities.)

Rounding out the cast regulars is the chill Inspector Reimon, the hot-headed Sergeant Shibata, who somehow always ends up doing all the grunt work, and Sherlock’s well-connected and cheerful landlady Kimi Hatano.

While the mysteries themselves are semi-predictable as they lead to the shadowy criminal organization Stella Maris, the stakes turn fraught when Wato becomes involved. When Sherlock finally realizes and admits her friendship with Wato, it’s a heartbreaking and tender moment. 

At only eight episodes long and with an open-ended finale, Miss Sherlock sets us up for what could have been great follow-up seasons. One can imagine the central friendship deepening, as well as plots delving into the backstories of each of the characters.

Sadly, Yuko Takeuchi passed away in September of 2020, leaving us with this show as one example of her luminous work, cut short.

Psycho-Pass

Streaming on: Netflix
Seasons: 2 seasons and the 2015 movie are available on Netflix

If you like your detective work with a side of cyberpunk and philosophical musings, then Psycho-Pass is right up your alley. 

Japan, in the near future, is the only peaceful society in a world full of strife, thanks to the Sybil System, which continually scans the mental states of its citizens. Sybil predicts what jobs citizens are best suited for, but more importantly, it also predicts the tendency of people to commit crime.

The higher the crime co-efficient (or the cloudier the hue of a person’s psycho-pass), the greater the menace to society. Penalties range from rehabilitation, paralysis and, finally, elimination. 

Psycho-Pass opens on rookie Inspector Akane Tsunemori’s hellish first day working for the Criminal Investigation Department. We meet her boss, by-the-book Nobuchika Ginoza, and their enforcers: hounds, as Ginoza calls them, men and women whose criminal tendencies are tolerated for their ability to hunt down offenders.

The enforcers tend to be more helpful to Akane and generally more interesting—righteous hottie Shinya Kogami, experienced ex-inspector Tomomi Masaoka, wise-cracking Shusei Kagari, and chill expert Yayoi Kunizuka (who has her own punk backstory). Rounding out the helpful latent criminal crew is glamorous analyst Shion Karanomori. 

The crimes the team solves each episode are dark and grisly, but also strangely poetic, prompting thought-provoking analysis, mostly from Kogami but also from the criminals themselves.

Season one's “Nobody Knows Your Mask,” a meditation on online identity when the real person behind a popular avatar is killed and his persona taken, is an early indicator that the anime is not all gore and has an extensive syllabus to match its storylines. 

The arc that takes place at Oso Academy, an all-girls’ boarding school where students are murdered, dismembered, preserved into resin and arranged into artworks (which Kogami hilariously critiques), is also memorable for this monologue, uttered by student art prodigy and serial killer Rikako Oryo: 

“Chastity and grace—traditional virtues that have been lost. They comprise the educational ideology of Oso Academy. They're priorities that are not valued in boys, only in girls. After having them instilled in us, we're shipped out as brand-name product, refined, sheltered maidens, and purchased by men who seek a classic piece of furniture called ‘a good wife and mother’ in a formality known as marriage.”

Akane Tsunemori’s growth, from rookie to experienced detective who eventually understands Sybil’s dark secret and yet has a seemingly incorruptible psycho-pass, is rewarding to watch, even as the mysteries of the week lead to criminal masterminds, most memorably the expert bullshit artist Shogo Makashima. 

At its core, the series posits to Akane, and to us: what are we willing to give for enduring peace and prosperity? The ramifications and consequences of that question, as explored by this show, is heady stuff.

Mindhunter

Streaming on: Netflix
Seasons: 2

On the surface, this show seems to stretch our definition of a detective series, but hear us out: instead of solving a mystery of the week, it plumbs the mysteries of different murderers’ minds as it explores the early days of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU). Tangentially, this also leads to actual cases being solved.

The BSU pioneers are Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff), an ex-hostage negotiator who develops an interest in criminal psychology; Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), the agency’s behavioral science head; and Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), a psychology professor.

Together, Ford and Tench travel the country interviewing serial, spree, and mass-murderers while Carr refines their techniques and shapes their collected data into something presentable to the top brass. 

Interpersonal clashes within the team happen when Ford’s intuitive understanding of criminal minds sometimes cross ethical borders. Carr, a closeted lesbian, navigates the social mores of the time weighed against her considerable career achievements. (For context, the show takes place between 1977-1980; homosexuality was only removed from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973.) Tench, for his part, mightily tries to shield his family from the dark realities of his work, even as his son exhibits disturbing behaviors.

For true crime fans, the show’s interview subjects are what podcast producers call the heavy hitters, eerily portrayed by actors who nail every tic and affectation. The articulate Ed Kemper (played by Cameron Britton), also known as the the Co-Ed Killer, first alerts Ford and Tench to the possibility of a common pathology among compulsive murderers and helps lay the foundation of the modern BSU.

Other creepy cameos include Charles Manson (Damon Herriman), Jerry Brudos, the shoe-fetish killer (Happy Anderson) and the spree killer Richard Speck (Jack Erdie). Bookending the episodes and hanging over the entire series like a malevolent specter is Dennis Rader, a.k.a BTK, played with dead-eyed ominousness by Sonny Valicenti.

With David Fincher behind the show, Mindhunter is expertly directed and all the more disturbing for what it doesn’t show. The description of grisly crimes and the motivations behind them form pictures in viewers’ minds that are worse than any onscreen depiction.

Season two’s subplot about a series of child murders in Atlanta takes a heart-breaking turn when it appears that there is a racially motivated reason for its quick resolution. 

Sadly for Mindhunter fans, the show has been put on indefinite hold since January 2020—not cancelled, but the cast and crew have been released from their contracts. Fincher has gone on record to say that he hopes to revisit the show again in the future.

With the show’s tantalizing hints of the BTK manhunt (which stretched to the 2000s), here’s hoping we’ll eventually get more of Holden, Bill and Wendy through the decades.