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Unforgotten (2015)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The gold standard, and the one to start with. Each six-episode series reopens one long-buried disappearance or murder in London, then follows several ordinary people whose lives turn out to be tied to it. Chris Lang writes the suspects with as much care as the detectives, so the real subject is what decades of keeping quiet does to a person.
Nicola Walker leads the first four series; Sinéad Keenan takes over from series five, and the show holds its quality through the change. Six series have aired, the latest in February 2025, and ITV has commissioned a seventh. Bring tissues for the endings.
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Cold Case (2003)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The American network take on the idea, and still the most comforting one. Kathryn Morris plays Detective Lilly Rush of a Philadelphia cold case squad, and the episodes reopen unsolved killings from years or decades back.
What makes it stick is the way it stages time: flashbacks are scored with music from the era of the crime, and characters are double cast, so you meet them as they looked then and as they are now. The emotion is laid on thick, and it works. With seven seasons and 156 episodes from 2003 to 2010, it suits anyone who wants a case wrapped up in an hour.
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Waking the Dead (2001)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
The darker, more forensic British original. Trevor Eve's Peter Boyd runs a London cold case unit, and he is short-tempered, difficult and very watchable, which gives the series a bite the gentler shows lack.
Each story runs as two hour-long episodes, enough room for old files, reexamined evidence and the psychology of crimes that sat untouched for years. It ran for nine series up to 2011, so there is a deep back catalogue, though the earliest stories look their age. Pick this one if you like your cold cases grim and your lead detective prickly.
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New Tricks (2004)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The cozy one. A Metropolitan Police squad of retired officers, led by Amanda Redman's Sandra Pullman, reinvestigates unsolved crimes the force long gave up on, and the joke is that the old-timers' memories and grudges often crack what new technology missed.
Dennis Waterman, James Bolam and Alun Armstrong make a lovely bickering trio in the early years, and Waterman stayed for all twelve series. It is lighter than everything else here, more comedy-drama than thriller, which makes it the easiest to binge on a weeknight. The later series, after the original cast thinned out, are noticeably weaker.
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True Detective (2014)
8.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Seasons 1 and 3
Watch these two seasons of the anthology and skip the others for this purpose. Season 1 has Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson questioned in 2012 about the 1995 Louisiana murder they worked, as a similar killing drags it back open. Season 3 is the purest fit of all: Mahershala Ali's Wayne Hays works the disappearance of two children in the Ozarks across 1980, 1990 and 2015, his own memory failing as the case refuses to close.
Both are slow, heavy and built on the gap between what the detectives remember and what really happened. Season 1 won five Emmys; season 3 is the quieter, sadder companion.
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Dept. Q (2025)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The best new arrival in years. Scott Frank and Chandni Lakhani moved Jussi Adler-Olsen's Danish novels to Edinburgh, where Matthew Goode's abrasive DCI Carl Morck returns from a shooting and is parked in a basement cold case unit nobody wants.
The first season's case, the unexplained disappearance of a prosecutor years earlier, is the kind of file everyone else had stopped looking at, and the misfit team around Morck is as much the draw as the mystery. It takes an episode or two to settle, then gets very hard to stop. Netflix renewed it for a second season in August 2025, with its release expected in 2027.
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Karen Pirie (2022)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
A cold case show with a sharp modern hook. In the first series, a popular true-crime podcast stirs up the 25-year-old murder of a barmaid in St Andrews, and young DS Karen Pirie is handed the job of reexamining it. Lauren Lyle plays her with real wit, and adapter Emer Kenny keeps the tone brisk.
It is based on Val McDermid's novels, and each series so far is a single story told in three long episodes. The second, adapting A Darker Domain, aired in summer 2025, and ITV has commissioned a third. Some reviewers found the pace stretched in places, so treat it as a weekend binge rather than a weekly watch.
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Criminal Record (2024)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The one about a case that was supposedly closed. An anonymous phone call sends Cush Jumbo's young detective June Lenker back to an old London murder and a possible miscarriage of justice, which sets her against Peter Capaldi's DCI Daniel Hegarty, the veteran officer who handled the original case.
The pleasure here is the standoff between two very good actors, and the way the series treats a wrongful conviction as something an institution would rather leave buried. For this list, season 1 is the one to watch: the second season of Paul Rutman's Apple TV drama, released in 2026, moves on to a new, present-day murder at a political rally.
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Signal (2016)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The 2016 Korean original, and the cleverest twist on the idea here. In 2015, profiler Park Hae-young picks up a discarded walkie-talkie and finds himself talking to a detective working in 2000, and together they chip away at old cases that police in the present never closed.
Several of its storylines were inspired by real Korean crimes, including the Hwaseong serial murders, which gives the fantasy premise real weight. It won Best Drama at the Baeksang Arts Awards, and Kim Hye-soo won Best Actress there as the head of the cold case team. At 16 episodes it is a long haul, but the payoffs land.
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Bloodlands (2021)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
A cold case where the old wounds are political. In present-day Northern Ireland, James Nesbitt's DCI Tom Brannick links a kidnapping to Goliath, a killer whose four victims from both sides of the divide vanished in 1998, weeks before the Good Friday Agreement.
One of those victims was Brannick's own wife, whose body was never found, so the investigation is as much about grief as about evidence. Series one is a tight four episodes; the six-episode second series in 2022 is more far-fetched. Jed Mercurio produces, and it has his knack for cliffhangers.
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The Missing (2014)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The most painful watch here, and one of the most rewarding. Harry and Jack Williams tell each series across two time frames: a child vanishes, and years later the family is still searching, with retired French detective Julien Baptiste, played by Tchéky Karyo, pulled back in.
Series one follows James Nesbitt's father eight years after his son disappeared on a family vacation in northern France. Series two, with David Morrissey and Keeley Hawes, begins when a girl abducted in Germany in 2003 reappears in the same town 11 years later, which reopens everything. This is about what an unsolved case does to the people left behind, so go in braced.
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Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. (2018)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
A scripted drama built on two real murders that went unsolved for years. The 10-episode USA Network series follows two detectives, Jimmi Simpson's Russell Poole and Josh Duhamel's Greg Kading, through separate investigations into the killings of Tupac Shakur in 1996 and the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, with Kading's task force taking up the case in 2006, nearly a decade on.
It is the one pick here rooted in actual events, so the frustration is real: leads go nowhere, departments protect themselves and the files keep their secrets. Expect a procedural more than a music biopic, and a good one if you want to see how a stalled investigation looks from the inside.
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Tunnel (2017)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The 2017 Korean series, a pulpier cousin to Signal. Choi Jin-hyuk plays Park Gwang-ho, a 1986 detective who chases a serial killer into a tunnel and comes out 30 years later, just as murders following the old killer's pattern begin again.
The fun is watching a man who still remembers the original crime scenes as fresh work alongside a new partner on a case everyone else considers ancient history. It runs 16 episodes on OCN, so it is a commitment, and the time-travel logic is best not examined closely. Choose it if Signal left you wanting more.
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Bodkin (2024)
6.9/10on IMDb
First aired
The comic option, for when you want the cold case without the gloom. Will Forte plays an American podcaster who arrives in a small Irish coastal town to dig into the disappearance of three people at a Samhain celebration 25 years ago, dragging along Siobhán Cullen's sharp, unimpressed investigative journalist.
It is partly a satire of true-crime podcasting, asking who gets to tell a town's tragedy, and partly a genuine mystery. Reviews were mixed, and the tone wobbles between farce and darkness, but at seven episodes on Netflix it is an easy weekend. Start here if the grimmer picks feel like too much.
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