Shows Like American Rust
If you loved American Rust's Drama and Crime storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Tin Star
The story of Jim Worth, an expat British police officer starting a new life with his family as police chief in Little Big Bear, an idyllic town near the Rocky Mountains. When his small town is overrun by migrant workers from a massive new oil refinery – the wave of drugs, prostitution and organised crime that follows them threatens to sweep away everything in its wake.
Long Bright River
A police officer patrols a Philadelphia neighborhood hard-hit by the opioid crisis. When a series of murders begins in the neighborhood, Mickey realizes that her personal history might be related to the case.
The Leftovers
When 2% of the world's population abruptly disappears without explanation, the world struggles to understand just what they're supposed to do about it. This is the story of the people who didn't make the cut.
Hill Street Blues
A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.
Aquarius
In the late 1960s, a Los Angeles police sergeant with a complicated personal life starts tracking a small-time criminal and budding cult leader seeking out vulnerable women to join his “cause.” The name of that man is Charles Manson.
Dalziel & Pascoe
British crime drama based on the "Dalziel and Pascoe" series of books by Reginald Hill, set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton. The unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-china-shop-copper Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick Detective Sargent, later Detective Inspector, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining a down to earth wit and humour.
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.
Interrogation
Based on a true story that spanned more than 30 years in which a young man was charged and convicted of brutally murdering his mother. Each episode is structured around an interrogation taken directly from the real police case files, with the goal of turning the viewer into a detective.
More Shows Like American Rust
T. J. Hooker
Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Hooker is a tough-as-nails veteran police officer with the LCPD who turns his back on a gold badge and goes back to patrolling the streets and training recruits. Along with his young partners in blue, Hooker take on Lake City's toughest criminals.
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.
Ballard
Detective Renée Ballard plunges into a web of murder and corruption as she hunts a ruthless serial killer and uncovers a sinister police conspiracy that threatens everything she stands for. With her own demons nipping at her heels, Ballard must outwit both criminals and colleagues to bring long-overdue justice to the victims and their families.
DCI Banks
A thrilling drama based on the novels by Peter Robinson. Stephen Tompkinson and Andrea Lowe star as the tenacious and stubborn Chief Inspector Alan Banks and the feisty and headstrong Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot.
In the Heat of the Night
In the Heat of the Night is an American television series based on the motion picture and novel of the same name starring Carroll O'Connor as the white police chief William Gillespie, and Howard Rollins as the African-American police detective Virgil Tibbs. It was broadcast on NBC from 1988 until 1992, and then on CBS until 1995. Its executive producers were Fred Silverman, Juanita Bartlett and Carroll O'Connor. TGG Direct released the first season of the series to DVD on August 28, 2012.
The Gold
On 26 November 1983, six armed men break into the Brink's-Mat security depot, stumbling across gold bullion worth £26m.
Big Sky
Private detective Cassie Dewell partners with ex-cop Jenny Hoyt on a search for two sisters who have been kidnapped by a truck driver on a remote highway in Montana. When they discover that these are not the only girls who have disappeared in the area, they must race against the clock to stop the perpetrator before another woman is taken.
Backstrom
Detective Lieutenant Everett Backstrom is a man with no filter. After a five-year exile to the traffic division for offensive behavior, he has returned from disgrace to lead Portland's newly minted S.C.U. Tasked with navigating the city's most sensitive and serious cases, he must solve each crime as he tries, and fails, to change his own self-destructive behavior. Based on renowned Swedish criminologist and novelist Leif G.W. Persson’s hit series of books of the same name.
The Madness
After a media pundit stumbles upon a dead body deep in the Poconos woods, he finds himself framed for the murder of a notorious white supremacist.
Dope Thief
Two lifelong friends in Philadelphia pose as DEA agents to rob small-time drug dealers. It's a perfect grift—until they choose the wrong mark and become targets of a massive narcotics enterprise.
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with American Rust (2021): Drama and Crime 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 American Rust.
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