Shows Like Real Detective
If you loved Real Detective's Drama and Documentary storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
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.
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.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery
Genius detective Nero Wolfe and his right-hand man, Archie Goodwin, solve seemingly impossible crimes.
The Vow
The docuseries follows people deeply involved in the group NXIVM — which is faced with various charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy — over the course of several years.
London Kills
With a documentary style delivery, this drama tells the story of a team of top murder detectives with each episode featuring a different murder while also following a serialized story involving the lead detective’s missing wife.
Crime
Detective Inspector Ray Lennox investigates the disappearance of a schoolgirl while battling cocaine addiction and a mental breakdown.
Murder in a Small Town
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.
More Shows Like Real Detective
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.
Grotesquerie
A series of heinous crimes have unsettled a small community, and Detective Lois Tryon feels they are eerily personal, as if someone—or something—is taunting her.
Vigil
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.
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.
Live PD
Dash cams capture footage from urban and rural police forces while on the job. A live look inside the everyday calls of police officers across the nation.
Goliath
Once a powerful lawyer, Billy McBride is now burned out and washed up, spending more time in a bar than a courtroom. When he reluctantly agrees to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the biggest client of Cooperman & McBride, the massive law firm he helped create, Billy and his ragtag team uncover a vast and deadly conspiracy, pitting them all in a life or death trial against the ultimate Goliath.
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".
Bad Girls
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.
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.
My Life Is Murder
Investigator Alexa Crowe, cannot help fighting the good fight – whether it is solving murders or combatting the small frustrations of everyday life. Fearless and unapologetic, Alexa's unique skills and insights into the darker quirks of human nature, allows her to provoke, comfort and push the right buttons as she unravels the truth behind the most baffling of crimes.
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.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Real Detective (2016): Drama and Documentary 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 Real Detective.
See full details for Real Detective (2016)