If you’re trying to check out some of the best true crime shows that have come out in the past few years, then you’ve come to the right place. Over the years, the best streaming services have offered massive collections of documentaries, limited series, and specials about everything from serial killers to cults to mysterious disappearances and so much more.
Everyone with a Netflix subscription, those with a Peacock Premium subscription, and subscribers of other popular streaming platforms probably know this by now, but keeping track of them all is no easy task.
Well, we’re here to solve the case and provide some of the best options for true crime fans whether they have a Max subscription or a Hulu subscription and many others.
This Is The Zodiac Speaking (2024)
The Director: Ari Mark, Phil Lott
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: Arthur Leigh Miller, though never charged, is long believed to have been the Zodiac. More than 50 years after the notorious serial killer’s reign of terror ended, new clues in the case, as Miller’s possible ties to it, are explored in great detail.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: The Zodiac case is one of the most well-known yet mysterious true crime stories in American history. This enthralling documentary does a tremendous job of sharing that story and new details about the prime suspect.
It’s Florida, Man (2024)
The Creators: Mark Herwick, Jeff Tomsic
Number Of Episodes:4
What It’s About: Real-life stories from Florida are brought to life in extravagant fashion while being reenacted by actors and comedians like Anna Faris, Sam Richardson, Ego Nwodim, and Randall Park.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Fans of the “Florida Man” trope will love It’s Flordia, Man with its hilarious yet real-life stories of love, heartbreak, and some terrible decisions made by enterprising criminals in the Sunshine State.
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story (2024)
The Creator: Ryan Murphy
Number Of Episodes: 9
What It’s About: After being put on trial for viciously murdering their parents, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez argue that they acted out of fear for their lives after years of alleged physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Much like Ryan Murphy’s Dahmner series two years earlier, Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story goes beyond the headlines and court transcripts in an attempt to make sense of one of the biggest crimes of the ‘90s.
Escape At Dannemora (2018)
The Director: Ben Stiller
Number Of Episodes: 8
What It’s About: A prison official forms a relationship with two inmates, which results in one of the most daring prison escapes of the 21st century.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: First released back in 2018, Escape at Dannemora found new life on Netflix in November 2024, and for good reason. This engaging, emotional, and intense prison story has incredible talent on both sides of the camera.
Cult Massacre: One Day In Jonestown (2024)
The Director: Marian Mohamed
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: A three-part documentary chronicling the life, death, and legacy of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple religious movement. From the humble beginnings to the largest mass suicide of all time, the full story is told in graphic detail.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: This engaging series gives new meaning to the quote hanging above Jones’ chair at Jonestown: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With interviews of survivors and their families, plus archival footage, this is worth the watch.
Baby Reindeer (2024)
The Director: Weronika Tofilska, Josephine Bornebusch
Number Of Episodes: 7
What It’s About: Based on star Richard Gadd’s autobiographical one-man show (though the names have been changed), the series follows a London bartender (played by Gadd) as he meets a lonely yet seemingly normal patron (played by Jessica Gunning), only for the woman to begin stalking and harassing him.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Tied together in the manner of psychological thrillers and dark comedies, the series creates an unnerving experience that’s also impossible to turn off.
Under The Bridge (2024)
The Creator: Quinn Shephard
Number Of Episodes: 8
What It’s About: Told through the eyes of police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone) and writer Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough), Under The Bridge examines the stories and lives of the teenage girls accused of carrying out an unspeakable murder as everyone attempts to bring an end to the devastating episode.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Critics called the series “compelling” upon its release and had great things to say about Gladstone and Keough’s performances throughout its eight-episode run. Taking notes from the source material written by Godfrey two decades before her own passing, Under the Bridge is a brilliant adaptation.
BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime (2016 - 2021)
The Director: Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej
Number Of Episodes: 66
What It’s About: Former BuzzFeed hosts Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej break down mysteries like the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the Collar Bomb Bank Robbery, and dozens of others.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Both informative and hilariously entertaining, BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime is a great way to learn a lot about all kinds of mysterious cases in a short amount of time.
Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer (2024)
The Director: Abby Fuller
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: Dr. Ann Burgess’ story as well as some of the high-profile killers she studied are told in great detail in the 2024 Hulu original, Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer, a fascinating three-part docuseries.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows:
From her days as a nurse to her time helping build up the FBI’s profiling strategies to being a prominent figure in the Menendez Brothers’ murder trial, Abby Fuller’s documentary is a great addition to the true crime collection and one that may even change your perspective on certain crimes.
The Black Widower: The Six Wives Of Thomas Randolph (2024)
The Executive Producer: Dan Abrams
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: Thomas Randolph is a man who has been married six times. Though not unheard of, the case becomes peculiar when it’s learned that four of those wives have died in mysterious circumstances.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: What starts out as one murder investigation slowly morphs into a chronicle of multiple deaths, unanswered questions, and legal loopholes that allowed an allegedly violent and unhinged man to live and kill with little to no repercussions for his actions.
Quiet On The Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV (2024)
The Director: Mary Robertson, Emma Schwartz
Number Of Episodes: 5
What It’s About: The series dives into various allegations brought against former high-ranking executives like Dan Schneider, who was ousted from the network in 2018, and how alleged abuse impacted countless child actors and crews working on shows like All That, Drake and Josh, and The Amanda Show.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Though hard to stomach at times, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV is an engaging and eye-opening dive into the shady world of TV in the 1990s and early 2000s.
American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024)
The Director: Zachary Treitz
Number Of Episodes: 4
What It’s About: An investigation into the decades-long mystery of a reporter who wound up dying under strange circumstances after investigating a political conspiracy. Bouncing between the current day and the latter part of the 20th century, the series follows the two journalists’ respective stories and attempts to find the truth, or as close to it as humanly possible.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows:
Attention-grabbing, riveting, and at times utterly terrifying, this is something for true crime fans looking for something other than stories about serial killers and missing person cases.
The Jinx: The Life And Deaths Of Robert Durst (2015)
The Director: Andrew Jarecki
Number Of Episodes: 12
What It’s About: Released in 2015, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst dove into the life, legacy, crimes, and mysteries involving the late real estate magnate.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: A docuseries that’s hard to turn off, The Jinx will leave you guessing at every turn as you try to determine the how and why of these violent murders.
Love Has Won: The Cult Of Mother God (2023)
The Director: Hannah Olson
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, a three-part HBO documentary series, was released in late 2023 and told the story of Amy Carlson, a former fast-food manager who became the leader of a mysterious new age religious movement.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: This three-part series has all the staples of a great true crime doc in that it touches on cults, money-making schemes, and mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of its main subject.
Dark Side Of The Ring (2019 - Present)
The Director: Jason Eisener
Number Of Episodes: 50
What It’s About: The biggest, baddest, and most notorious figures and incidents, both well-known and overlooked, from the world of professional wrestling are explored in great detail.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Part history lesson and part true crime documentary, Dark Side of the Ring sheds light on and breaks down tales that are so intense and seem so far-fetched that you’d think they were all part of some elaborate wrestling program.
McMillions (2020)
The Director: James Lee Hernandez, Brian Lazarte
Number Of Episodes: 6
What It’s About: McMillions turns its focus to the McDonald’s Monopoly fraud scandal and the wild ride investigators went on to get to the bottom of the story.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Expect to learn a lot about the scandal and all involved parties, as the documentary series throws so much information at you before everything is said and done.
Telemarketers (2023)
The Director: Adam Bhala Lough, Sam Lipman-Stern
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: The basic gist of the series goes like this: two former coworkers go on a years-long campaign to expose the telemarketing industry that the documentary claims scammed people out of money in the name of charity.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows:
It’s not as sinister or dramatic as some of the other shows on this list, but make no mistake, there’s some messed up stuff going on here. With a story that gets crazier as it goes on, an all-time documentary personality in Pat Pespas, and outstanding (albeit at times accidental) journalism, this is a must-watch.
A Friend Of The Family (2022)
The Creator: Nick Antosca
Number Of Episodes: 9
What It’s About: The 2022 limited series tells the hard-to-believe story of Robert Berchtold (Jake Lacy), a man who kidnapped and abused Jan Broberg (Hendrix Yancey and McKenna Grace) on two different occasions in the mid 1970s.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: A Peacock original worth checking out, A Friend of the Family is an engrossing, terrifying, and at times maddening, true crime drama series based on the Abducted in Plain Sight documentary.
Waco: American Apocalypse (2023)
The Director: Tiller Russell
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: A three-part docuseries breaking down practically every aspect of the 51-day standoff between the Branch Davidians and the FBI and ATF.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows:
Through extensive interviews with surviving Branch Davidians and federal agents who participated in the weeks-long siege, the documentary offers a tremendous amount of insight into the showdown that directly and indirectly led to the biggest news stories of the final years of the 20th century.
Mindhunter (2017 - 2019)
The Creator: Joe Penhall
Number Of Episodes: 19
What It’s About: FBI special agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), as well as psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), try to revolutionize the science of criminal profiling.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: In addition to the main arc and various plots that it spawned, the show also featured portrayals of notorious serial killers like Charles Manson, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr., the BTK Killer, and most notably, Edmund Kemper.
Making A Murderer (2015 - 2018)
The Director: Laura Ricciardi, Moira Demos
Number Of Episodes: 20
What It’s About: Told over the course of multiple years, this 20-part docuseries dives into the life of Steven Avery, who was wrongly convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder (for which he spent 18 years in prison) only to be convicted of murder a few years after his release.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: A major conversation starter and hot-topic item on the internet over the years, Making a Murderer remains one of the most complex and confounding additions to the true crime genre.
Who Killed Robert Wone? (2023)
The Director: Jared P. Scott
Number Of Episodes: 2
What It’s About: Four men go to bed in a house one August 2006 night, only for one of them to be stabbed to death an hour later. A decades-long investigation and attempt at closure follows.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: In a chat with CinemaBlend before the series’ debut, director Jared P. Scott revealed there were “a number of bizarre, perplexing, and baffling pieces” to the story that he felt made the story worth telling. And without giving too much away about the story, this one goes in so many different directions.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal (2023)
The Director: Julia Willoughby Nason, Jenner Furst
Number Of Episodes: 6
What It’s About: A multi-part docuseries about the trial of former prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, who has since been convicted in the double-murder of his wife and son.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: From accidental deaths in boating accidents to corruption and all other kinds of scandals, this multifaceted docuseries leaves no stone unturned.
Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (2022)
The Director: Tony Vainuku, Ryan Duffy
Number Of Episodes: 2
What It’s About: This two-part documentary recounts one of the biggest sports stories from the past decade-and-a-half: Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o announcing the death of his longtime girlfriend only to discover he was being catfished all along.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: If anything, The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist adds a great deal of context to the sports scandal and helps make a case for Te’o being a victim instead of the butt of all kinds of jokes and ridicule.
Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)
The Creator: Ryan Murphy
Number Of Episodes: 10
What It’s About: Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story examines how Dahmer became one of the most notorious serial killers in American history and how his actions did irreparable damage to those in his community for more than a decade.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Though controversial at the time of its release, this 10-part drama series does an incredible job of showing the utter devastation of Dahmer’s crimes and questions something like this could go on for so long with no one in power doing anything about it.
I’ll Be Gone In The Dark (2020)
The Director: Liz Garbus, Elizabeth Wolff, Myles Kane, Josh Koury
Number Of Episodes: 7
What It’s About: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is one part breakdown of the 50 sexual assaults and 10 murders committed by the Golden State Killer (also known as the East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker, and EARONS) and one part exploration of the late true crime writer Michelle McNamara’s years-long crusade to identify the heinous criminal and finally bring him to justice for crimes he committed nearly 50 years ago.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Few true crime documentaries have as much heart and emotion as I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. This sprawling series not only chronicles the attempts to nab the Golden State Killer but also serves as a personal exploration of how McNamara put her heart and soul into her award-winning book of the same name.
Don’t Fuck With Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer (2019)
The Director: Mark Lewis
Number Of Episodes: 3
What It’s About: A group of internet sleuths attempts to uncover the identity of a man who posted a series of videos of himself killing cats but quickly find themselves tracking down a serial killer.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Don’t Fuck with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer is full of unique personalities, wild situations, and some truly bizarre twists and turns along the way.
O.J.: Made In America (2016)
The Director: Ezra Edelman
Number Of Episodes: 5
What It’s About: A sprawling five-part (or 467-minute) deep dive into the life, career, and legacy of O.J. Simpson and how he went from one of the most successful athletes of the 20th century to public enemy number one.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: One of the top docuseries detailing the “Crime of the Century” and what led to it, O.J.: Made in America also dissects American culture and how key moments from the 20th century ultimately led to Simpson being acquitted.
The Vow (2020)
The Director: Jehane Noujaim
Number Of Episodes: 15
What It’s About: Former members of the NXIVM cult as they come to terms with their roles in helping the organization go from a self-improvement group to an alleged sex cult, in which high-ranking members have been sentenced to prison.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: By combining interviews with former members who escaped and hours upon hours of footage of the group’s leader, Keith Raniere, and other high-ranking members like former actress Allison Mack, the series tells the frightening story of those who became consumed with power and greed and the lives they ruined along the way.
Unsolved Mysteries (2020)
The Creator: John Cosgrove, Terry Dunn Meurer
Number Of Episodes: 30
What It’s About: The iconic television series was rebooted in 2020 with dozens of stories about missing persons, cold cases, and tales of the paranormal.
Why It’s One Of The Best True Crime Shows: Few series on Netflix come close to the scope and scale of Unsolved Mysteries. There is a little something for everyone, especially for fans of true crime cases that leave you guessing at every turn.
The thing about true crime shows is that there is always going to be another documentary, docuseries, or drama series down the road that will grab our attention with tales so grim we just can’t look away. If you want to know what's coming down the road, take a look at our updated guide to the 2025 TV schedule to get a head start on the next great true crime documentary or drama series.
