Shows Like Criminal Minds
If you loved Criminal Minds's Crime and Drama storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Profiler
Rachel Burke is a criminal profiler, one of the best, actually. She, along with a sophisticated team of specialists on the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force in Atlanta, investigates crimes throughout the country. Together, they solve the toughest of cases while trying to live their lives as best they can.
The Blacklist
Raymond "Red" Reddington, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests: bringing down dangerous criminals and terrorists. In the last two decades, he's made a list of criminals and terrorists that matter the most but the FBI cannot find because it does not know they exist. Reddington calls this "The Blacklist". Reddington will co-operate, but insists that he will speak only to Elizabeth Keen, a rookie FBI profiler.
The Mentalist
Patrick Jane, a former celebrity psychic medium, uses his razor sharp skills of observation and expertise at "reading" people to solve serious crimes with the California Bureau of Investigation.
Numb3rs
Inspired by actual cases and experiences, Numb3rs depicts the confluence of police work and mathematics in solving crime as an FBI agent recruits his mathematical genius brother to help solve a wide range of challenging crimes in Los Angeles from a very different perspective.
CSI: NY
Follow the investigations of a team of NYPD forensic scientists and police officers identified as "Crime Scene Investigators".
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.
CSI: Miami
CSI: Miami follows Crime Scene Investigators working for the Miami-Dade Police Department as they use physical evidence, similar to their Las Vegas counterparts, to solve grisly murders. The series mixes deduction, gritty subject matter, and character-driven drama in the same vein as the original series in the CSI franchise, except that the Miami CSIs are cops first, scientists second.
More Shows Like Criminal Minds
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.
21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street revolves around a group of young cops who would use their youthful appearance to go undercover and solve crimes involving teenagers and young adults.
Without a Trace
The series follows the ventures of a Missing Persons Unit of the FBI in New York City.
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.
CIA
When by-the-book FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman is loaned out to a clandestine CIA/FBI task force, he finds himself teamed up with secretive and roguish CIA case officer Colin Glass. Together they work covert operations in New York, uncovering international plots, terrorist cells, and geopolitical secrets.
Barnaby Jones
Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. The show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement. William Conrad guest starred as Frank Cannon of Cannon on the first episode of Barnaby Jones, "Requiem for a Son" and the two series had a two-part crossover episode in 1975, "The Deadly Conspiracy".
CSI: Cyber
The FBI's team of Cyber Crime Investigators, headed by Special Agent Avery Ryan, works to solve cases involving the dark-net. Avery, a Special Agent in Charge and esteemed Cyber-Psychologist heads up a team, including Senior Special Agent Elijah Mundo, tasked with solving murders, cyber-theft, hacking, sex offences, and blackmail.
Prodigal Son
The son of a notorious serial killer becomes an acclaimed criminal psychologist who uses his unique insight into how killers think to help the NYPD.
Wiseguy
Vinnie Terranova does time in a New Jersey penitentiary to set up his undercover role as an agent for the OCB (Organized Crime Bureau) of the United States. His roots in a traditional Italian city neighborhood form the underlying dramatic base throughout the series, bringing him into conflict with his conservative mother and other family members while acting undercover as syndicate enforcer.
Luther
A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
A Las Vegas team of forensic investigators are trained to solve criminal cases by scouring the crime scene, collecting irrefutable evidence and finding the missing pieces that solve the mystery.
Perception
Dr. Daniel Pierce, a neuroscientist and professor, is recruited to help the federal government crack difficult cases. His intimate knowledge of human behavior and masterful understanding of the mind give him an extraordinary ability to read people, but his eccentric view of the world and less-than-stellar social skills can often interfere with his work.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Criminal Minds (2005): Crime and Drama themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Criminal Minds.
See full details for Criminal Minds (2005)