Anime Like True Detective
If you loved True Detective's Drama and Mystery 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
American Crime Story
An anthology series centered around some of history's most famous criminal investigations.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.
CSI: NY
Follow the investigations of a team of NYPD forensic scientists and police officers identified as "Crime Scene Investigators".
Homicide: Life on the Street
An American police procedural chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit.
Baretta
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.
Ellis
DCI Ellis, a tenacious cop, is parachuted into failing investigations alongside her partner DS Harper. Each case will bring her to a different police station where she'll have to not only immerse herself in the case, but also win over the local police.
More Anime Like True Detective
Dexter
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.
Fargo
A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.
Grimm
After Portland homicide detective Nick Burkhardt discovers he's descended from an elite line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms," he increasingly finds his responsibilities as a detective at odds with his new responsibilities as a Grimm.
CSI: Vegas
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.
Criminal Minds
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.
Cross
Alex Cross is a brilliant but flawed homicide detective and full of contradictions. A doting father and family man, Cross is single-minded to the point of obsession when he hunts killers. He is desperate for love, but his wife’s murder has left him too damaged to receive it.
Motive
A team of Vancouver investigators, led by homicide detective Angie Flynn, sets out to uncover the motive of each puzzling murder by discovering the killer's connection to the victim. Viewers get a glimpse of the killer before and after the crime is committed.
Perry Mason
Set in 1932 Los Angeles, the series focuses on the origin story of famed defense lawyer Perry Mason. Living check-to-check as a low-rent private investigator, Mason is haunted by his wartime experiences in France and suffering the effects of a broken marriage. L.A. is booming while the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression — but a kidnapping gone very wrong leads to Mason exposing a fractured city as he uncovers the truth of the crime.
Slasher
Thirty years ago, in the sleepy community of Waterbury, a killer known as “The Executioner” murdered Sarah Bennett's parents. Now Sarah and her husband Dylan have returned to town, only to find herself the centerpiece in a series of horrifying murders centered around the seven deadly sins.
The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1985 to 1986, and on the USA Network from 1987 to 1989. The series is an updated re-imagining of the classic 1955 series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The First 48
The First 48 follows detectives from around the country during these first critical hours as they race against time to find the suspect. Gritty and fast-paced, it takes viewers behind the scenes of real-life investigations with unprecedented access to crime scenes, autopsies, forensic processing, and interrogations.
Cardinal
Detective John Cardinal attempts to uncover the mystery of what happened to the missing 13-year-old girl whose body is discovered in the shaft-head of an abandoned mine. At the same time, he comes under investigation by his new partner, Lise Delorme, a tough investigator in her own right.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with True Detective (2014): Drama and Mystery 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 True Detective.
See full details for True Detective (2014)