Detective shows easily belong in the conversation for “most popular genre of television.” If anything trumps them, it would be medical drama, but both have fueled countless hours of TV for decades, giving employment to some of our most dependable character actors and entertaining audiences for generations. Very few of us are going to forget the likes of 24, NYPD Blue, Miami Vice, or any of the ongoing NCIS series. These are genre staples. But the following list digs a little deeper to remind you of a few classics in the Detective genre that might have flown under your radar, or that you once wanted to catch up on but never found the time. So long as you can find them on streaming, these shows definitely are worth your time.
Elementary
You can’t go wrong with Sherlock Holmes as your primary character. But while Benedict Cumberbatch was revising the classic detective for the BBC’s Sherlock, Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu modernized the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for a sharp detective series that offered a fun spin on the classic side character of Irene Adler (Natalie Dormer), as well as Moriarty.
Cop Rock
Who doesn’t want splashy musical numbers with their police procedural? Cop Rock combined musicals with cop shows (hence the title), and came from creator Steven Bochco – Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue – so people assumed his credentials would lead to success. It didn’t, but this remains an interesting experiment.
Father Dowling Mysteries
Here’s a successful format for high-performing mystery series. Take a beloved television veteran, and drop them into a detective mold that has a unique hook. You will see this template used often (we’ll keep calling it out), and it’s used well when Happy Days icon Tom Bosley took on the role of a Catholic priest investigating all sorts of crimes around Chicago.
Quincy M.E.
Similar to Tom Bosley stepping into a priest’s outfit, vintage Odd Couple veteran Jack Klugman rediscovered fame and celebrity when he played Quincy for the long-running medical detective series. Quincy M.E. blended crime and medical genres, with Klugman playing an L.A. medical examiner who finds himself solving multiple murders. And it was a huge hit, producing nearly 150 episodes.
Jake and the Fatman
I’m not sure you could get away with calling a television character The Fatman anymore, but the moniker fit the legendary William Conrad to a tee. This beloved series split time between L.A. and Hawaii, and gave Conrad’s character a memorable pet bulldog named Max, who probably deserved his own spinoff.
Fish
Back in the day, Hollywood looked at Abe Vigoda and thought, “Prime time television star.” Mind you, Vigoda was spinning off of the wildly popular Barney Miller television series, And Fish focused on the home life of Vigoda’s NYPD detective, Phil Fish. But still, the show was called Fish, and starred Vigoda. Strange times.
Booker
Another spinoff, this one from a much younger cast and source material. 21 Jump Street followed baby-faced cops (including Johnny Depp) as they investigated crimes in area high schools. Because Depp quickly jumped to movies, the series introduced Richard Grieco as his rival Booker, and that character inspired a show of his own.
Lethal Weapon
Hollywood can be a two-way street. Movies can inspire television shows, and TV shows can inspire films. We have seen good examples of both, and I admired what Lethal Weapon did with its tropes, not recreating Mel Gibson and Danny Glover but allowing Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans to make the characters their own. I also liked Thomas Lennon as Leo Getz, the Joe Pesci character from the movies.
Rush Hour
Not every adaptation succeeds, even if it’s coming off of beloved source material. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan had a hit film franchise in Rush Hour, but bringing it to the small screen proved to be problematic for lead actors Justin Hires and Jon Foo, and audiences bailed after the first season.
The Night Of
Some of the best detective stories happen on HBO, and in a limited-series format. Nothing will probably top the haunting first season of True Detective, but Richard Price and Steven Zaillian came close to that level with they did The Night Of. My biggest regret is that we never got to see the late James Gandolfini in the part that eventually went to John Turturro, but the rest of the cast of this crime thriller was aces.
Poker Face
This one ranks as “forgotten,” but also “forgot it existed,” because it’s available on the Peacock service. But man, is it brilliant, as the show follows Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) on a road trip across America where she stops off, gets embroiled in a complicated case, then uses her lie-detector personality to unmask a criminal. Lyonne is magnificent, and the writing is top of the line.
Hunter
The 1980s were the heyday for weekly detective series. They weren’t complicated, and rarely packed a gimmick. They just had a tough cop doing the Dirty Harry approach to crime fighting. Fred Dryer was a one-time NFL player who found new life while acting, and his NBC series benefitted from the chemistry he enjoyed with co-star Stepfanie Kramer.
Remington Steele
Before James Bond, Pierce Brosnan was Remington Steele, a con artist and former thief who assumes the made-up name of the title to get closer to private investigator Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist). Everyone knew this was Brosnan doing Bond – the show’s pilot was called “License to Steele.” And thankfully, Brosnan got the chance to finally play 007 starting in 1995 with Goldeneye.
Cagney & Lacey
There aren’t enough female-driven detective shows on this list (or, in the industry in general). Which might be why we fondly remember the entertaining Cagney & Lacey, which focused on career women and working mothers while it tackled police procedurals. For a stint, leads Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless dominated the Emmys for their work on that show… a streak that remains intact to this day.
T.J. Hooker
Almost everyone reading this list knows William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. But after Star Trek, Shatner found new life as veteran police sergeant T.J. Hooker of the fictional LCPD. T.J. Hooker is a memorable program, also because it helped to make Heather Locklear a household name.
Wolf
In the television business, there’s Dick Wolf, and then everything else. In that “everything else” category you may recall Wolf, a late-80s private eye series that starred Jack Scalia in the title role. Tony Wolf was a good San Francisco cop who was framed for a crime and took a hard fall. Now he serves as … a fisherman? Trust me, it works in the show.
Bones
David Boreanaz has enjoyed an excellent television career. After breaking out in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he parlayed that success into Angel, and currently entertains on SEAL Team. In between, though, he and the wonderful Emily Deschanel solved FBI cases using forensics in the riveting Bones, which found a new angle into the crime syndicate of shows.
Limitless
Another television show trying to branch off of a movie. Only, Limitless takes its idea from a less-than-successful Bradley Cooper movie, doesn’t add a whole heck of a lot when it comes to new ideas, and then flounders after 22 episodes. Note to Hollywood: Adapt the good movies into TV shows.
Hart to Hart
There’s an entire subgenre of detective TV shows that spark off a romance. Remington Steele fell into that category, as does Hart to Hart, a show created by famed novelist Sidney Sheldon that cast Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a wealthy married couple who frequently solve crimes. It was breezy and fun, like a Sheldon paperback novel, and belongs on this list.
Cannon
For a while, the name Quinn Martin was synonymous with quality television. The American TV producer backed shows like Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, Banyon, and beyond. To that list, we add Cannon, which starred William Conrad as a street-smart former LAPD officer who had deep knowledge of all types of cultural topics.
Wiseguy
Similar to Quinn Martin, producer Stephen J. Cannell was a brand that usually led to entertaining television. This one ended up going darker than other detective shows, as it allowed lead actor Ken Wahl to dig into the repercussions of being deep undercover for the FBI, and the toll it takes on a detective both physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Look for a young Jonathan Banks (pictured above) as Wahl’s handler.
Simon & Simon
Pairings on detective shows didn’t all have to be romantic. In Simon & Simon, the series was constructed around brothers who run their own detective agency, even though they come at problems from completely different directions. That led to both drama and comedy that entertained on a weekly basis.
Hardcastle and McCormick
They don’t have to be brothers. In the case of Stephen J. Cannell’s Hardcastle and McCormick, the main protagonists were (checks notes) an eccentric judge and a race car driver. Sure, why not?
Mare of Easttown
One of my favorite realities of cable detective shows is that they occasionally lure top-tier movie star talent. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in True Detective. Amy Adams for Sharp Objects. And the brilliant Kate Winslet in this blue-collar, beaten-down detective series that deserves a second season, people.
Psych
There aren’t enough comedic detective shows. Which probably makes Psych the best one, and I’ll give it bonus points for being really clever. Kudos to James Roday Rodriguez for figuring out exactly how to play Shawn Spencer, an irreverent investigator who consistently impresses with his ability to observe situations.
Karen Sisco
Currently, I can’t get enough of Carla Gugino in the shows of Mike Flanagan, from The Haunting of Hill House to the breathtaking The Fall of the House of Usher. You might not remember that before she shifted to horror, Gugino excelled as this character from the Elmore Leonard novels, in a colorful show for ABC that deserved more than one season.
JAG
We have a few shows that currently explore crimes in the military. They all owe a little bit to JAG, the legal drama with a Naval theme that starred Catherine Bell and David James Elliott. The main characters were uniformed lawyers, but the show often required them to investigate complicated crimes. Without JAG, we wouldn’t have NCIS or all of its mega-hit spinoffs.
Nash Bridges
Sometimes, an actor’s personality is just too bright, and you have to work them into some program. Don Johnson had that radiance, It carried Miami Vice for years, and later in his career, lent credence to the lighthearted Nash Bridges. Johnson and Cheech Marin were a terrific duo, even earning a Nash Bridges movie after the TV series concluded.
Crazy Like A Fox
Another entry in the "crafty older detective and savvy younger partner" genre (see: Hardcastle and McCormick), as well as in the "set in San Francisco" category. Crazy Like a Fox leaned on the charms of the irascible Jack Warden (The Verdict, Heaven Can Wait) as an unpredictable private eye who often roped his wound-tight son (John Rubinstein) into his cases. So, we also got the "odd couple" format, and the father-son format. I swear, Crazy Like a Fox was a lot of fun, despite how formulaic it sounds on paper.
Walker, Texas Ranger
With all due respect to Chuck Norris and his long-running Walker, Texas Ranger TV program. But the main reason I know anything about this show is because of Conan O’Brien’s ridiculous late-night talk show bit where he’d pull a lever, and random clips from Walker would play out of context. And they were hysterical. I’m sure the show was very serious. To me, it’s one of the funniest detective shows Hollywood ever produced.
Bored to Death
Here's one of the comedies that deserved a longer shelf life. Jason Schwartzman is criminally underrated in comedies. He’s often the best part of any Wes Anderson feature, and he was outstanding in this quirky program about a novelist who moonlights as a private eye in Brooklyn. As good as Schwartzman was, his lunacy was met by Ted Danson and Zach Galifiankis, two gems who rounded out this memorable ensemble.
Reacher
A more recent detective show than others on this list is Reacher. Lee Child has written a series of excellent novels about Jack Reacher, an ex-military investigator who wanders from town to town and gets caught up in cases. Tom Cruise made two Reacher movies, but hulking Alan Ritchson perfectly personifies Reacher in the Amazon Studios show, though many may not have checked it out yet.
