Items14The creator’s order
  1. 1Unforgotten (2015)Unforgotten (2015) 8.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 8, 2015The 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…0
  2. 2Cold Case (2003)Cold Case (2003) 7.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 28, 2003The 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…0
  3. 3Waking the Dead (2001)Waking the Dead (2001) 7.9/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jun 18, 2001The 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…0
  4. 4New Tricks (2004)New Tricks (2004) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 1, 2004The 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…0
  5. 5True Detective (2014)True Detective (2014) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 12, 2014Seasons 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…0
  6. 6Dept. Q (2025)Dept. Q (2025) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 29, 2025The 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…0
  7. 7Karen Pirie (2022)Karen Pirie (2022) 7.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 25, 2022A 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…0
  8. 8Criminal Record (2024)Criminal Record (2024) 7.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 10, 2024The 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…0
  9. 9Signal (2016)Signal (2016) 8.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 22, 2016The 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…0
  10. 10Bloodlands (2021)Bloodlands (2021) 6.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired Feb 21, 2021A 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…0