The best British crime dramas to watch now
Nail-biting shows that will keep you up at night, from Shetland to Down Cemetery Road
Quality UK crime dramas are difficult to beat, whether they are gritty police procedurals packed with twists or slow-burn dramas that keep you guessing until the end. Here are some of the best to add to your watchlist.
Under Salt Marsh
A young boy’s death in a close-knit Welsh seaside town sparks a murder investigation in this “well-crafted and pacy” crime drama, said Daisy Jones in Vogue. His body is discovered by primary school teacher and former detective Jackie (Kelly Reilly), who is “unable to shake her detective’s instinct”. Creator Claire Oakley “unfolds the plot with care and patience” and the characters feel “fleshed out, flawed and complicated”. Like “any good crime thriller” the “glowering landscape” is “as much a character” as the local residents: the impending arrival of a catastrophic storm adds a sense of “delicious, horrible forbearing”. Can Jackie “uncloak the killer” before the small town becomes “engulfed in the swamp of mother nature?”
Apple TV
The Cage
The scriptwriter Tony Schumacher gave himself “a lot to live up to” when he made his TV debut “The Responder”, starring Martin Freeman as a harried Liverpool cop, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. But he has managed to do so with “The Cage”, his new drama on BBC One starring Sheridan Smith and Michael Socha as the cashier and manager of a downmarket casino on Merseyside. When the pair both realise the other is stealing from the casino safe, they begin to work together; what they don’t know is that the business is a front for a drugs empire. As “things go from bad to worse” for them, they “get better and better for the viewer”. “The Cage” is “an astonishing, deeply angry, deeply moving state-of-the-nation piece merely masquerading as a mesmerising, perfectly paced and plotted thriller”.
BBC iPlayer
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Gone
Following his starring role in the comedy “Daddy Issues”, David Morrissey “returns to his bread and butter” with another gritty crime drama, said Abby Robinson in Radio Times. He plays Michael Polly, headmaster of an elite private school in Bristol, who “takes Britain’s stiff upper lip to an entirely new level” when his wife Sarah (another teacher at the school) vanishes. As the “hours crawl by”, his daughter Alana (Emma Appleton) is the one “desperately trying to get to the bottom” of where her mum has gone. Morrissey puts on a “chilling display”; when he breaks the fourth wall at the end of the first episode it feels as if he is “staring directly into your soul”. Is he just a “product of his environment”, struggling to show his emotions? “Or is there something more sinister at play?”
ITV
This City is Ours
This “cracking drama about the murky world of Liverpudlian drug dealers” stars Sean Bean as Ronnie Phelan, a “kind of Sheffield Tony Soprano”, said Ralph Jones in NME. Things start to go wrong when Ronnie decides to retire, sparking a bitter power struggle between his “hot-headed” son, Jamie, and his "disturbingly implacable” right-hand man, Michael (James Nelson-Joyce). When a shipment of cocaine disappears, “no one is safe”. But the show goes far beyond the “grim machismo of drug deals” – Michael and his partner Diana are “struggling to conceive”, and she is grappling with the “moral conundrum of raising a child” in such a violent world. “It’s cheering to be reminded that this country knows how to make decent TV.”
BBC iPlayer
Hijack
The absorbing first series of “Hijack” followed Sam Nelson (Idris Elba), a corporate negotiator who finds himself trapped on a hijacked plane. Series two swaps the “white-knuckle claustrophobia” of a Dubai-London flight for the “cramped, dark and grimy tunnels” of the Berlin U-Bahn, said Tim Glanfield in The Times. But while Elba takes up the starring role again, “this is no rinse-and-repeat job”. Packed with “crime, corruption and knife-edge tension”, the second series is a brand-new tale of “personal pain”, powered by a “clever script that hurtles forward”. The Nelson we meet here is a far cry from the “self-assured” professional at the centre of series one. Now, he’s a “broken man” whose “jumpy” behaviour isn’t just because “he’s back on public transport after a flight from hell”. Nothing can prepare you for the shocking “twist that flips the show on its head”. It’s a nail-biting watch.
Apple TV
The Capture
This “knotty” conspiracy thriller centres on “correction”: an “ethically dubious practice” in which intelligence services manipulate camera feeds “to fabricate evidence”, said Dan Einav in the Financial Times. Detective Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) “contemplates blowing the whistle” on this disturbing use of deepfake technology in series one, but “ends up seemingly abdicating her morals by accepting a job at the Counter Terrorism Command”. The second instalment “shifts its focus to international diplomacy after a Hong Kong dissident is assassinated in London”. In all, it’s a “gripping, not to mention chillingly conceivable”, show, anchored by an “intelligently crafted story”.
BBC iPlayer
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Shetland
“Oh, ‘Shetland’, with your whistling winds, isolated crofts, chunky knitwear, industrial port-core and unrealistically high frequency of violent crime,” said Emily Bootle in The i Paper. The “stalwart Scot noir” recently returned for its 10th series, and “spiky, blunt” DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen) is back leading “Shetland’s detectives to whichever bloody-handed islander might have wrought havoc this year”. From the “sweeping landscape shots” to the oddly lovable cast of characters, all of the elements of the show we “know and love” remain intact. “As long as the BBC keeps making it, I’ll keep watching.”
BBC iPlayer
Happy Valley
This “tasty” British crime drama ended after three seasons back in 2023, “concluding one of the greatest trilogies in modern television”, said Mangan in The Guardian. In the third and final instalment, police sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) continues to wrestle with the grief of losing her daughter Becky – who died by suicide “after being raped and impregnated by the shitpot of shitpots, Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) – and the challenges of raising Becky’s child. “Brutal, tender, funny, compelling and heartbreaking to the last”, it’s a fitting ending and a “fiery farewell” to “our magnificent valley girl”.
BBC iPlayer
Blue Lights
This Belfast-based police procedural is back for its third season with a well “deserved” Bafta under its belt, said Gerard Gilbert in The i Paper. There’s always a buzz around whether “Line of Duty” will return for another season “but frankly that doesn’t matter” when we have this “altogether more interesting and realistic” show. The third instalment “shifts to affluent South Belfast, where a Dublin-based crime gang is attempting to dominate the city’s drugs trade”. Co-creators and writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson grew up in Northern Ireland, and bring their “deep knowledge” of the country’s policing to the drama, giving it an “authentic” feel. For now, “it remains the best cop show on British TV”.
BBC iPlayer
Down Cemetery Road
“You don’t have to speak algorithm to understand why Apple TV might have gone for ‘Down Cemetery Road’,” said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph. It’s adapted from a novel by Mick Herron, author of the wildly successful “Slow Horses” series, and it follows much the same template as that franchise. Emma Thompson plays the maverick, Oxford-based private detective Zoë Boehm, a “cynical” character not a million miles from Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb. She’s called upon by Sarah (Ruth Wilson), a local art restorer married to a banker, who has been rattled by an explosion on her street: it was blamed on a gas leak, but Sarah has sniffed out a conspiracy. What follows is “great stuff”, said Mangan in The Guardian. As Boehm battles to uncover the truth, there is neither a wasted moment nor a wasted word in this twisty thriller.
Apple TV
Frauds
Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker star as ex-cons reunited for one last job in this fun crime caper. Bert (Jones) has been released early from prison in Spain on compassionate grounds as she faces a terminal cancer diagnosis. “Or so she claims – you can’t trust a word Bert says,” said Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, Sam (Whittaker), Bert’s “former accomplice and possibly an ex-lover”, has been “going straight”, living a quiet life in a rural farmhouse. “But Bert has bigger ambitions.” By the end of the first episode, she’s revealed her master plan: to pull off one last heist. “Immersed in their characters up to the hilt”, the pair are “entirely believable” – and make for a compelling watch. Can they get away with pinching a priceless Dali painting? “I can’t wait to find out.”
ITV
Get Millie Black
This police procedural is a “welcome departure from both the genre’s tired tropes and the drizzly British skies they usually unfold beneath”, said Emily Watkins in The i Paper. The action follows ex-Scotland Yard detective Millie-Jean Black (Tamara Lawrance) as she returns to her hometown of Kingston in Jamaica and begins work on a missing persons case. Written by Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, the show’s voiceover acts as an “elegant bridge between its author’s literary pedigree and his new medium”. With its “stellar” lead performances and “overwhelmingly smart” script, it’s “about as far from the bog standard police procedural as Jamaica’s Kingston is from London”.
Channel 4
The Gold
Based on the true story of the Brink’s-Mat gold heist at a security depot near Heathrow airport in 1983, the first series of this BBC drama is an “accomplished” piece of work, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Hugh Bonneville stars as Brian Boyce, the “dogged detective” leading the hunt for the missing gold who “personifies everything that was good and proper about old-fashioned British policing”. The second series has a “bleaker, more desperate tone” but is still powered by skilful writing and “top-notch performances from everyone involved”.
BBC iPlayer
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Irenie Forshaw is the features editor at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.