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TV Shows / Moods / gritty

Shows that feel gritty

MoviesTV shows

Scuffed knuckles and bad neighborhoods. Stories with dirt under the nails. Ranked by how strongly each show carries the mood, then by quality. Every show links to its kindred spirits.

Better Call Saul poster
Better Call Saul
2015–2022 · 6 seasons · AMC
★ 9crime · dramaNetflix

Six years before Saul Goodman meets Walter White. We meet him when the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and, often, against Jimmy, is “fixer” Mike Ehrmantraut. The series tracks Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts “criminal” in “criminal lawyer".

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Money Heist
2017–2021 · 3 seasons · Netflix
★ 8.2crime · dramaNetflix

To carry out the biggest heist in history, a mysterious man called The Professor recruits a band of eight robbers who have a single characteristic: none of them has anything to lose. Five months of seclusion - memorizing every step, every detail, every probability - culminate in eleven days locked up in the National Coinage and Stamp Factory of Spain, surrounded by police forces and with dozens of hostages in their power, to find out whether their suicide wager will lead to everything or nothing.

The Sopranos poster
The Sopranos
1999–2007 · 6 seasons · HBO
★ 9.2crime · dramaMax

The story of New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads. Those difficulties are often highlighted through his ongoing professional relationship with psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi. The show features Tony's family members and Mafia associates in prominent roles and story arcs, most notably his wife Carmela and his cousin and protégé Christopher Moltisanti.

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Dexter
2006–2013 · 8 seasons · Showtime
★ 8.6crime · drama · mysteryParamount+

Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police also leads a secret life as a serial killer, hunting down criminals who have slipped through the cracks of justice.

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Marvel's Daredevil
2015–2018 · 3 seasons · Netflix
★ 8.6crime · drama · action & adventureDisney+

Lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock uses his heightened senses from being blinded as a young boy to fight crime at night on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil.

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The Wire
2002–2008 · 5 seasons · HBO
★ 9.3crime · dramaMax

Told from the points of view of both the Baltimore homicide and narcotics detectives and their targets, the series captures a universe in which the national war on drugs has become a permanent, self-sustaining bureaucracy, and distinctions between good and evil are routinely obliterated.

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Fargo
2014–2024 · 5 seasons · FX
★ 8.8crime · dramaHulu

A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.

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Narcos
2015–2017 · 3 seasons · Netflix
★ 8.7crime · dramaNetflix

A gritty chronicle of the war against Colombia's infamously violent and powerful drug cartels.

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Yellowstone
2018–2024 · 5 seasons · Paramount Network
★ 8.6western · dramaPeacock

Follow the violent world of the Dutton family, who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. Led by their patriarch John Dutton, the family defends their property against constant attack by land developers, an Indian reservation, and America’s first National Park.

Breaking Bad poster
Breaking Bad
2008–2013 · 5 seasons · AMC
🍅 96%★ 9.5drama · crimeNetflix

Walter White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher, is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of only two years left to live. He becomes filled with a sense of fearlessness and an unrelenting desire to secure his family's financial future at any cost as he enters the dangerous world of drugs and crime.

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Sons of Anarchy
2008–2014 · 7 seasons · FX
★ 8.5crime · dramaHulu

The Sons of Anarchy (SOA) are an outlaw motorcycle club with many charters in the United States and overseas. The show focused on the original and founding charter, Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original, often referred to by the acronym SAMCRO, Sam Crow, or simply Redwood Charter. The charter operates both legal and illegal businesses in the small town of Charming, California. They combine gun-running and a garage, and involvement in porn film industry. Clay, the charter president, likes it old school and violent; while Jax, his stepson and the club's VP, has thoughts about changing the way things are done. Their conflict has effects on both the club and their personal relationship, especially when Jax goes on a personal quest to cleanse the SAMCRO name and image.

Pablo Escobar: The Drug Lord poster
Pablo Escobar: The Drug Lord
2012 · 1 season · Caracol TV
★ 8.4crime · dramaNetflix

Pablo is a man with a natural ability for business. Early in his life, Pablo is introduced to the business of cocaine and the power it yields. A young life of crime lands Pablo in and out of jail as he builds his criminal empire. Pablo expands his power through politics but it is not long before his conflicts as a Congressman and a drug lord collide. Pablo has his enemies executed, but not before the United States activates its own war on the Medellin cartel.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit poster
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
1999– · 28 seasons · NBC
★ 8.1crime · drama · mysteryHuluPeacock

In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.

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Spartacus
2010–2013 · 3 seasons · STARZ
★ 8.4dramaStarz

Torn from his homeland and the woman he loves, Spartacus is condemned to the brutal world of the arena where blood and death are primetime entertainment.

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Criminal Minds
2005– · 19 seasons · CBS
★ 8.1crime · drama · mysteryPrime VideoHulu

An elite team of FBI profilers analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again. The Behavioral Analysis Unit's most experienced agent is David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU who returns to help the team solve new cases.

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Ozark
2017–2022 · 4 seasons · Netflix
★ 8.4crime · dramaNetflix

A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million in five years to appease a drug boss.

DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story poster
★ 8crime · dramaNetflix

This series examines the gruesome and horrific true crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the systemic failures that enabled one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.

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Chicago P.D.
2014– · 14 seasons · NBC
★ 8.1crime · dramaPrime VideoPeacock

A riveting police drama about the men and women of the Chicago Police Department's District 21 who put it all on the line to serve and protect their community. District 21 is made up of two distinctly different groups: the uniformed cops who patrol the beat and go head-to-head with the city's street crimes and the Intelligence Unit that combats the city's major offenses - organized crime, drug trafficking, high profile murders and beyond.

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Arrow
2012–2020 · 8 seasons · The CW
★ 7.5crime · drama · action & adventure

Spoiled billionaire playboy Oliver Queen is missing and presumed dead when his yacht is lost at sea. He returns five years later a changed man, determined to clean up the city as a hooded vigilante armed with a bow.

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Tulsa King
2022– · 4 seasons · Paramount+
★ 7.9crime · drama · comedyParamount+

New York mafia capo Dwight "The General" Manfredi is released from prison after 25 years and exiled by his boss to set up shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Realizing that his mob family may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight slowly builds a crew.

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Banshee
2013–2016 · 4 seasons · Cinemax
★ 8.4crime · dramaMax

Banshee is an American drama television series set in a small town in Pennsylvania Amish country and features an enigmatic ex-con posing as a murdered sheriff who imposes his own brand of justice while also cooking up plans that serve his own interests.

How to Get Away with Murder poster
How to Get Away with Murder
2014–2020 · 6 seasons · ABC
★ 8.1crime · drama · mysteryHulu

A sexy, suspense-driven legal thriller about a group of ambitious law students and their brilliant, mysterious criminal defense professor. They become entangled in a murder plot and will shake the entire university and change the course of their lives.

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The Night Of
2016 · 1 season · HBO
★ 8.4crime · drama · mysteryMax

After a night of partying with a female stranger, a man wakes up to find her stabbed to death and is charged with her murder.

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Boardwalk Empire
2010–2014 · 5 seasons · HBO
★ 8.5crime · dramaMax

Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition is a place where the rules don't apply. And the man who runs things -- legally and otherwise -- is the town's treasurer, Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, who is equal parts politician and gangster.