Try Life. It only lasted I think 2 seasons on NBC but it left a lasting impression on me, and it came to a mostly satisfying conclusion in that two seasons.
Top of the Lake and The Fall are both great. The criminal in Top of the Lake is a real surprise, though in The Fall, he’s shown in the first ten minutes – the suspense is whether he’ll be caught.
For something light and fun, there are the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries
“Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” for a good detective series set in Roaring 20s Australia. Two seasons with a third in production.
If you have the DVD service, try “New Tricks”. Several seasons about a cold case squad composed of retired male officers led by an active lady officer.
The Danish/Swedish version of The Bridge is very good (but I don’t know whether it is on the Netflix streaming service). Another Danish show that is definitely on Netflix is Dicte, about a crime reporter. I just watched a French series called Witnesses which was excellent. And I’ll put in another vote for The Fall.
I was toying with starting a thread very much like this, so I will be reading on with interest.
There’s a Swedish version and an English version of the same detective series, Wallander. I slightly preferred the Swedish version, possibly because I thought the women were hotter. They are both very good, though.
Far be it from me to dis Sir Kenneth even by implication, but I’d go with the Krister Henriksson version instead. I prefer the* foreigness *of it and the subtitles are utterly incidental.
Line of Duty is a BBC police drama. The first season was pretty good…the second season not as much (although still popular enough to commission two more seasons)
Oh Lordy yes, Krister Henriksson every time. I don’t know if it’s something to do with trying to do an English language version actually in the original country, but something about the Branagh version just didn’t work. They were too obviously “acting”, or at least Branagh was, and most of the other actors were looking as though they wanted to be anywhere else. Just to confuse, in one episode, an actor playing one of the regular good guys in the Henriksson version turned up playing a villain in one episode of the Branagh series.
If you’re OK with foreign language cop shows, try the French series Engrenages (Spiral - though I would have thought a better translation would be Wheels Within Wheels):
Have to agree about ‘New Tricks’, Very sharp writing and terrific actors.
We’ve been watching Death in Paradise on Netflix. It’s rated pretty highly and the first season was good, but I find the writing to be very uneven in the second season and, when we finish that, we’ll probably go on to something else.