Cardinal

Series Similar to Cardinal

If you enjoyed Cardinal, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. Dept. Q

   2025 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · returning

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8.1).

   DCI Carl Morck is a brilliant cop but a terrible colleague. His razor-sharp sarcasm has made him no friends in Edinburgh police. After a shooting that leaves a young PC dead, and his partner paralysed, he finds himself exiled to the basement and the sole member of Department Q; a newly formed cold case unit. The department is a PR stunt, there to distract the public from the failures of an under-resourced, failing police force that is glad to see the back of him. But more by accident than design, Carl starts to build a gang of waifs and strays who have everything to prove. So, when the stone-cold trail of a prominent civil servant who disappeared several years ago starts to heat up, Carl is back doing what he does best - rattling cages and refusing to take no for an answer. 

2. Springfloden

   2016 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile.

   Springfloden alternates between the time lines of 1987 and 2011. The latter follows Police Academy Cadet Olivia Rönning and her work for a class assignment: She is tasked with unraveling the mystery of a cold case from 1987, one in which three people sadistically murdered a young woman on a Koster Islands beach – a killing that a young boy inadvertently witnessed.At that time, national homicide investigator Tom Stilton was unable to solve the case, since he couldn't ascertain the victim's identity, locate the murderers, or establish a motive for the killing. And so it was shelved. Fifteen years later, he took a new approach to the case, but a bruising divorce left Stilton in a fragile mental state that deteriorated even further.As Rönning digs through case files, she sorts out as much as she can, but there are still many questions left unanswered. What would really help her is getting input from the now-former detective, the homeless Stilton.

3. Mr. Mercedes

   2017 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8).

   A demented serial killer taunts a retired police detective with a series of lurid letters and emails, forcing the ex-cop to undertake a private, and potentially felonious, crusade to bring the killer to justice before he can strike again. Based on the bestselling novel by Stephen King.

4. Wallander

   2008 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   This drama follows Inspector Kurt Wallander – a middle-aged everyman – as he struggles against a rising tide of violence in the apparently sleepy backwaters in and around Ystad in Skane, southern Sweden. Based on the international best-selling books by Henning Mankell.

5. DCI Banks

   2010 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   No-nonsense Yorkshire detective Alan Banks (Stephen Tompkinson) tackles each new case with the weary professionalism of a man who has seen too much. Watch him doggedly decipher the clues in the gruesome murders on his patch.

6. The Missing

   2014 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8), hidden gem.

   Thriller series exploring the emotional fallout of a child's abduction not only on the family but on the wider community.

7. Blood

   2018 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile.

   Blood follows Cat Hogan, an isolated woman on the run from her past, a past she is forced to confront when the sudden ‘accidental' death of her mother, Mary, draws her back to the family she has spent the last ten years trying to avoid. Her suspicions start to mount against her father, when she begins to notice discrepancies in his stories.

8. MINDHUNTER

   2017 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8.4).

   MINDHUNTER is based on the 1996 book Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, by former special agent John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. For years, Douglas pursued some of the most notorious serial killers and rapists, developing profiling techniques to catch them. The book goes behind the scenes of some of his highest-profile cases, including the man who hunted prostitutes in Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer. To hone in his profiling methods Douglas interviewed and studied a skew of serial killers. Several book and TV characters have been based in part on him, including Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs, Will Graham on Hannibal and Jason Gideon on Criminal Minds.

9. The Widower

   2014 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8).

   The Widower is a three-part drama from ITV Studios based on the crimes of convicted murderer, Malcolm Webster, played by Reece Shearsmith (Psychoville, The League of Gentlemen, A Field in England).The Widower tells how, over a 13 year period Malcolm Webster set about poisoning and murdering his first wife, attempting to do the same to his second wife and moving on to a further scheme to deceive his third fiancée.

10. Bodyguard

    2018 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

    Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8.2).

    Set in and around the corridors of power, Bodyguard tells the fictional story of David Budd, a heroic but volatile war veteran now working as a Specialist Protection Officer for the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch (RaSP) of London's Metropolitan Police Service.When he is assigned to protect the ambitious and powerful Home Secretary Julia Montague, whose politics stand for everything he despises, Budd finds himself torn between his duty and his beliefs. Responsible for her safety, is he actually her biggest threat?