When I think of detective shows, I guess I gotta think of "True Detective". Matthew McConoughey was a meticulous guy who has to hunt a satanic weirdo in the first season.

I don't think The Following was a very good show, so I can't recommend that. Sorry, Kevin Bacon! I've also been meaning to check out "Aquarius", a Charles Manson show where David Duchovny is on the case.

Gonna re-evaluate this thread with more thoughts on crime, cuz I love crime shows. Not necessarily detective vs criminal stuff, but some of it.

Of course, one of the best is Twin Peaks. It's a murder/mystery show with a lot of quirks, and it started off relatively tame on network television, but David Lynch kept making it better. By the time the first movie rolled around, it already got more sinister with an R-rating. What appears to be a light-hearted show on the surface is actually rooted in rape, murder, incest, and supernatural overtones. When Showtime made season 3, they kept the edgy style and all the criminal subplots that go with it. It's pretty glorious.

The Punisher was a recent one that was super gritty, and had tons of violence in it. Some of it even made me squirm. He's more of a vigilante working against a government conspiracy, but it's all really about revenge with him.

Sons of Anarchy is perhaps the coolest show I've ever seen, and it gets ultra violent at times. I'm talking eyes gouged out, tongues cut off, people dismembered by rival gangs, and some truly emotional bits in there too. It really draws you in.

Of course, I was also a big fan of Dexter, in which a guy who works for the police is hunting serial killers because he's one too. He just channels his anger more constructively. The first half of the show is rock solid, and the rest is hit or miss, but they got pretty twisted too. Police conspiracies, manhunts, etc. Everyone of us watching was waiting to see Dexter lose his cool, because Michael C. Hall was phenomenal in that show. Even through the shitty seasons, he kept us coming back.

OZ is set entirely inside a prison for the entire show. I remember maybe ONE scene that was outside, but the rest is about inmates trying to survive in an equally dangerous setting. Plus, you even get a subplot where Tom Atkins plays a white supremacist. How cool is that? People get fucked up in this show.

Perhaps my second favorite Marvel/Netflix show is Jessica Jones, a private investigator who has to stop a menacing David Tennant from ruining her life. Now that dude made the show great. What an evil bastard, he was.

A recent crime show was Mr. Mercedes, featuring good old Brendan Gleeson having to stop a killer who likes to taunt him any chance he can get. Not particularly graphic, but there's some violence. Definitely looking forward to season 2, based on another Stephen King book.

Mindhunter was a recent Netflix series that I watched some of. It's well made, and most of it is just talk and talk, but I still kinda zoned out of it and never finished.

I think foz and I can agree that the best crime show ever is Trailer Park Boys, in which a drunken trailer park supervisor and his shirtless cheeseburger-addicted assistant try to stop drug-dealers and greasy schemers. JK on this being gritty, and there's almost no physical violence, but it's still great.