NoBadPicks

Anime Like The Waterfront

If you loved The Waterfront's Drama and Crime storytelling, these anime deliver a similar experience — selected for art style, narrative depth, and emotional impact. Each includes where to stream it now.

Top Picks

Hightown
6.7

Hightown

2020

Amid the drug trade on Cape Cod, a body washes ashore and is discovered by an irreverent National Marine Fisheries Service officer, Jackie Quinones, who is determined to help solve the murder even if the state cops want her nowhere near the case.

Carl Weber's The Family Business
8.4

Carl Weber's The Family Business

2018

Meet the Duncans, a prominent family from Jamaica, Queens. By day, they’re an upstanding family; by night, they live a dangerous secret life.

Vigil
7.2

Vigil

2021

The mysterious disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler and a death on-board the submarine HMS Vigil bring the police into conflict with the Navy and British security services. DCI Amy Silva and DS Kirsten Longacre lead an investigation on land and at sea into a conspiracy that goes to the very heart of Britain’s national security.

Painkiller
7.2

Painkiller

2023

The causes and consequences of America's opioid epidemic unfold in this drama following its perpetrators, victims and an investigator seeking the truth.

Outer Banks
8.3

Outer Banks

2020

A tight-knit group of teens unearths a long-buried secret, setting off a chain of illicit events that takes them on an adventure they'll never forget.

Bad Girls
7.5

Bad Girls

1999

Bad Girls is a British television drama series that was broadcast on ITV from 1 June 1999 to 20 December 2006 and starred Simone Lahbib, Mandana Jones, Debra Stephenson, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis and many more throughout the eight-year run. The series was broadcast in 17 countries and was produced by Shed Productions, the company which later produced Footballers' Wives and Waterloo Road. It is set in the fictional women's prison of Larkhall, and features a mixture of serious and light storylines focusing on the prisoners and staff of G Wing. From 2010, the UK broadcast rights were bought by CBS Drama, and is repeated regularly – as of September 2012, the channel is re-running the series again in a late-night time slot.

Weeds
7.5

Weeds

2005

After the unexpected death of her husband, a suburban mom resorts to selling weed to support her family.

The Bay
6.7

The Bay

2019

Family Liaison Officer Lisa Armstrong becomes a little too emotionally involved with a case (to the point where she might compromise it) concerning a pair of missing Morecambe twins to whose distraught parents she is assigned.

More Anime Like The Waterfront

A Nero Wolfe Mystery
7.8

A Nero Wolfe Mystery

2001

Genius detective Nero Wolfe and his right-hand man, Archie Goodwin, solve seemingly impossible crimes.

Smother
6.6

Smother

2021

On the rugged coast of County Clare, Val Ahern's husband is found dead at the foot of a cliff the morning after a family party. The matriarch starts to dig into the family's secrets to find out who might be responsible.

Baretta
6.4

Baretta

1975

Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title role.

Sneaky Pete
7.5

Sneaky Pete

2015

A con man on the run from a vicious gangster takes cover from his past by assuming the identity of his prison cellmate, Pete, “reuniting” with Pete’s estranged family, a colorful, dysfunctional group that threatens to drag him into a world just as dangerous as the one he’s trying to escape - and, just maybe, give him a taste of the loving family he’s never had.

Suspicion
6.8

Suspicion

2022

Four ordinary Brits are accused of kidnapping the son of a prominent U.S. media mogul. They embark on a desperate race against time to prove their innocence, but will anyone believe them—and are they telling the truth?

Inside Man
6.8

Inside Man

2022

A prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar cross paths in the most unexpected way.

Murder in a Small Town
6.8

Murder in a Small Town

2024

Karl Alberg moves to a quiet coastal town to soothe a psyche that has been battered by big-city police work but finds himself needing to call upon all his skills to solve the murders that continue to wash up on his shore.

Crime
6.3

Crime

2021

Detective Inspector Ray Lennox investigates the disappearance of a schoolgirl while battling cocaine addiction and a mental breakdown.

Murdaugh: Death in the Family
6.8

Murdaugh: Death in the Family

2025

Maggie and Alex enjoy a lavish life of privilege as members of one of South Carolina's most powerful legal dynasties. But when their son Paul is involved in a deadly boat crash, the family is faced with a test unlike any they've ever encountered. As details come to light and new challenges emerge, the family's connections to several mysterious deaths raise questions which threaten everything Maggie and Alex hold dear.

The Untouchables
7.8

The Untouchables

1959

Special Agent Eliot Ness and his elite team of incorruptible agents battle organized crime in 1930s Chicago.

CSI: Vegas
7.8

CSI: Vegas

2021

Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.

Miami Vice
7.5

Miami Vice

1984

The story of the Miami Police Department's vice squad and its efforts to end drug trafficking and prostitution, centered on the unlikely partnership of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs - who first meet when Tubbs is undercover in a drug cartel.

Why These Anime Are Similar

These recommendations share core qualities with The Waterfront (2025): Drama and Crime themes, comparable animation style, and similar narrative pacing. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface anime most likely to resonate with fans of The Waterfront.

See full details for The Waterfront (2025)

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