Cracker

Series Similar to Cracker

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

1. Breaking Bad

   2008 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (9.2).

   Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White, a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife and teenage son who has cerebral palsy. White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of two years left to live. With a new sense of fearlessness based on his medical prognosis, and a desire to secure his family's financial security, White chooses to enter a dangerous world of drugs and crime and ascends to power in this world. The series explores how a fatal diagnosis such as White's releases a typical man from the daily concerns and constraints of normal society and follows his transformation from mild family man to a kingpin of the drug trade.

2. Luther

   2010 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · returning

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

   A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts.

3. Better Call Saul

   2015 · Drama, Crime, Legal · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.6).

   Better Call Saul is the prequel to the award-winning series Breaking Bad, set six years before Saul Goodman became Walter White's lawyer. When we meet him, the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and often against, Jimmy is "fixer" Mike Ehrmantraut, a beloved character introduced in Breaking Bad. The series will track Jimmy's transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts "criminal" in "criminal lawyer.

4. Oz

   1997 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.7).

   HBO's violent men-behind-bars drama is an addictive, testosterone-driven soap opera for guys. The eight episodes of the first season set the style for the show: a massive cast of a vivid characters on both sides of the bars, four or five stories unleashed at a breakneck pace and framed by angry, oddball introductions, and a soaring casualty rate. Created by Homicide producer Tom Fontana, this drama quickly earned its rightful reputation as the most brutal show on TV. It's simple chemistry: combine volatile ingredients in a confined space, shut tight, and shake.

5. The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies

   2014 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8), hidden gem, also on ITV1.

   This drama tells the real-life story of retired schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies who was initially questioned by police as a suspect in the murder of Jo Yeates who rented a flat from him. He was vilified by the press, partly on account of his eccentric appearance and long flowing hair, even after he had been released on bail by the police.

6. The Sopranos

   1999 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.9).

   The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: Like 1999's other screen touchstone, American Beauty, the HBO series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.

7. The Wire

   2002 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.9).

   The first season of The Wire (2002) concentrated on the often-futile efforts of police to infiltrate a West Baltimore drug ring headed by Avon Barksdale and his lieutenant, Stringer Bell. In Seasons Two and Three, as the Barksdale investigation escalated, new storylines involving pressures on the working class and the city's political leadership were introduced. Season Four focused on the stories of several young boys in the public school system, struggling with problems at home and the lure of the corner - set against the rise of a new drug empire in West Baltimore and a new Mayor in City Hall. The fifth and final season of The Wire centers on the media's role in addressing - or failing to address - the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

8. The Shield

   2002 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.6).

   Detective Vic Mackey is the leader of an elite Strike Team unit, a group of cops effective at eliminating crime but also operating under Vic's own set of rules. But his rules sometimes cross the fine line between legal and illegal. Now the precinct has a new captain who doesn't like Vic's tactics and wants to bust him off the force - even as the captain finds himself going to Vic for help whenever the going gets rough.

9. Gangland Undercover

   2015 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.1), hidden gem.

   The only man brave enough to sneak into three outlaw biker gangs and live to tell the tale, Charles Falco, author of "Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws", goes from convict to infiltrator as he secretly documents the Vagos' illegal activities and ultimately brings them to justice. With the real Charles Falco starting each episode in a silhouetted interview, his story is brought to life in this fact-based docudrama series that sees Falco work as an informant for the Feds on a covert mission inside the dangerous Vagos' world of violence, murder and drug trafficking. Having climbed the gang's ranks while facilitating 62 arrests, Charles Falco exposes how he crippled the criminal enterprise from the core of the biker underworld in this mind-blowing true story, Gangland Undercover.

10. Thorne

    2010 · Drama, Crime · ended

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

    Thorne, a television drama series which debuted on Sky1 in the UK on 10 October 2010, is based on crime writer Mark Billingham's novels. The series stars David Morrissey in the title role of Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, and includes Aidan Gillen, Eddie Marsan, and Natascha McElhone as supporting cast members.