The best British crime dramas

Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper in Adolescence.

Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper in the 'nightmarish' Adolescence

(Image credit: Alamy / It's All Made Up Productions / Plan B Entertainment / Warp Films / Album)

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Adolescence
This City Is Ours
Get Millie Black
The One That Got Away
Out There
Virdee
Fool Me Once
Until I Kill You
Slow Horses
After the Flood
Criminal Record

By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK, Adrienne Wyper, The Week UK

last updated 1 April 2025

"It's official: we're a nation of crime drama addicts and we're not ashamed to admit it", said Good Housekeeping. From "Fool Me Once" to "Slow Horses", "we simply can't get enough" of these absorbing series. Thankfully, 2025 is already shaping up to be another cracking year for bingeworthy British crime dramas. Here are some of the best to add to your watch list.

Adolescence

This four-part mini series, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, is a "chilling examination of murder and toxic masculinity", said Variety. The action follows a family whose lives unravel when 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper) is accused of murdering a girl at his school. The "dark and brilliantly written" British crime drama explores the rise of the "manosphere" and its disturbing impact on young people's lives. "Gutting, raw and stunningly acted", "Adolescence" is a "nightmarish" tale that's a gripping, and important, watch.
Netflix

Scouse accents and "authentic dialogue" are among the many "pleasures" of this excellent British crime drama about the "murky world of Liverpudlian drug dealers", said NME. As patriarch Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean) considers retirement, his right-hand man Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce) must decide whether to take the reins of the patriarch's successful cocaine-smuggling business. But when a shipment of drugs disappears, "no one is safe". "This City Is Ours" is a "dense, propulsive drama" and a "cheering" reminder that Britain still knows "how to make decent TV".
BBC iPlayer

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Booker-prize-winning novelist Marlon James's first television drama is an "impressive piece of work", said Carol Midgley in The Times. The action follows Millie-Jean Black (Tamara Lawrance), a Scotland Yard detective who leaves the Met and returns to Jamaica to work in the missing persons department. Much like a novel, each episode is narrated by a different character, adding to the show's "freshness and originality", and there's more story packed into the "first 300 seconds" than some series manage in an entire episode.
Channel 4

This English-language remake of the Welsh drama, Cleddau, is a "supremely satisfying treat", said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. A "cracking crime thriller" merged with a psychological drama, it follows two detectives (and exes) who are "forced into partnership once more" to investigate the murder of a nurse in a Cambrian seaside town. "Smartly plotted" and packed with twists, it's a gripping watch, spurred on by the "will-they-won't-they" tension between DI Ffion Lloyd (Elen Rhys) and DS Rick Shelton (Richard Harrington).
BBC iPlayer

Martin Clunes is "perfectly cast" in ITV's "very watchable" crime drama "Out There", said The Telegraph. He plays Nathan, a Welsh farmer whose vulnerable son Johnny is drawn into a county-lines drug-running operation.The first episode is "slow and steady", introducing us to various characters, including Eiry Thomas as a "determined local bobby", and Gerran Howell and Carly-Sophia Davies, who play the siblings responsible for "getting Johnny involved in this mess". But over the course of the series it "ramps up to great effect, turning it into a thriller".
ITV

This "glossy" new BBC detective drama is set and filmed entirely in Bradford, said Radio Times. The action follows detective Virdee (Staz Nair) as he hunts down a killer who is targeting the city's Asian community, while struggling with his chaotic personal life. Crafted in a "meticulous manner", viewers are given an insight into each of Virdee's family members' inner worlds; it isn't easy to pack "all that richness" into just six episodes, but the series' writer A.A. Dhand "pulls it off in spectacular style". There's "no wasted dialogue" or scenes crammed with too much information. Instead, "Virdee" delivers all the "action and twists you'd expect from a high-budget blockbuster".
BBC iPlayer

Of course, "John would no more fool James' colleagues than a stuffed rabbit would", but "Mitchell being the master of social agony", the deception "plays out as excruciatingly as you could wish". Although stressed by modern life – "Buildings, offices, computers! Everyone talking at once: moving around with no structure, no purpose!" he exclaims with Mitchell's "trademark baffled fury" – he nevertheless manages to solve murders that his twin's team are working on "thanks to his talent for puzzles and a rigorously logical mind".
BBC iPlayer

Harlan Coben's "Fool Me Once" topped the Netflix chart for several weeks at the start of 2024 and became one of the streaming platform's most-watched shows of all time. Michelle Keegan stars as a widow who thinks she sees her late husband in footage from their young daughter's nanny cam. The series has "wild moments that made no sense to the overall story", said The Tab, and an ending "so unpredictable my mind felt like it exploded a little", but it "kept us all on the edge of our seats".
Netflix

This "extraordinary portrait" of Delia Balmer is rare, fearless and "values viewers' intelligence", said The Guardian. The "relentlessly confrontational" drama is based on the true story of Balmer's experience surviving repeated physical and sexual assaults by her boyfriend, convicted serial killer, John Sweeney. Anna Maxwell Martin delivers "the best performance of her career" as the free-spirited, socially awkward Delia. Shaun Evans as Sweeney is equally compelling, giving an "altogether terrifying" portrayal of the killer. In some ways, "Until I Kill You" is a classic domestic violence drama, but the "magnificent treatment of a damnable, unending subject" ultimately illuminates the heartbreaking experience from a fresh angle.
ITVX

The British spy thriller is "such a breath of fresh air in a TV landscape dotted with low-effort nonsense", said Forbes. Based on Mick Herron's "Slough House" series, the "masterful" drama follows a team of dysfunctional MI5 agents, led by the iconic Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman). A thriller at heart, "Slow Horses" can also be "so funny, so suspenseful and so emotionally poignant all at once". The fourth season begins with David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), former MI5 heavyweight, succumbing increasingly to dementia, while Lamb is dealing with a London bomb. The show is "swaggering and well-defined", said The Independent, and across-the-board stand-out performances "make this one of the best series on TV".
Apple TV+

"The publicity made this one sound like a standard police procedural, with added water," said The Guardian, but it soon "gets really good". In the aftermath of a river bursting its banks, a murder mystery unfolds "sparked by the discovery of a man's body in a lift in an underground car park". At first presumed trapped by floodwater, the post mortem revealed that he died at least three days before that. Out to investigate is Jo (Sophie Rundle), a heavily pregnant police officer who "races against the clock to solve the murder case before her baby arrives", said Radio Times. "You'll want to stick around to find out how this messy business concludes."
ITVX

In his 40-year acting career, Peter Capaldi had "never played a cop – until now", said The Independent. His turn in "Criminal Record", a drama based on two warring detectives, "feels worth the wait", and is "elevated by an equally impressive performance from Cush Jumbo that matches his intensity exactly". In a "cosier police procedural, this pairing might have ended up as an 'odd couple' detective duo". But this eight-part thriller, which explores institutional racism, sexism and malpractice in the Metropolitan Police, is "definitely not that show: it's much nastier and, therefore, much more realistic".
Apple TV+

Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.