Des

Series Similar to Des

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

1. Black Bird

   2022 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

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

   Inspired by actual events, when high school football hero, decorated policeman's son and convicted drug dealer Jimmy Keene is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison, he is given the choice of a lifetime — enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall, or stay where he is and serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole. Keene quickly realizes his only way out is to elicit a confession and find out where the bodies of several young girls are buried before Hall's appeal goes through. But is this suspected killer telling the truth? Or is it just another tale from a serial liar? 

2. Appropriate Adult

   2011 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, also on ITV1.

   Dramatisation of the case of serial killers Fred and Rose West, focusing on the way in which they were brought to justice.

3. Time

   2021 · Drama, Thriller · returning

   Recommended for similar Thriller profile.

   Guilt, violence and impossible choices – what does it take to survive? Tense, gritty and heartbreaking – Jimmy McGovern's award-winning prison drama, with an all-star cast.

4. The Widower

   2014 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8), also on ITV1.

   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.

5. A Confession

   2019 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, also on ITV1.

   A Confession tells the story of how Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher deliberately breached police procedure and protocol to catch a killer, a decision that ultimately cost him his career and reputation.

6. Monster

   2017 · Drama, Thriller, Mystery · ended

   Recommended for similar Thriller profile, hidden gem.

   In the north of Norway, a young girl disappears from an isolated religious community. Detective Hedda Gilbert returns to her place of birth where she is forced to work with special agent Dreyer.

7. 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.

8. Midwinter of the Spirit

   2015 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, also on ITV1.

   Merrily Watkins, a single mother who is not your average country vicar. Her newly acquired training in the works of exorcisms has pulled her to the dark side of the pulpit. She has become one of the very few women priests who are working as exorcists - a job which is mistrusted by the modern church and rarely ever talked about. Merrily is joined by Rev Huw Owen, a deliverance ministry tutor and Merrily's mentor. Her advanced and excessive knowledge of the paranormal underworld brings her to the notice of the local police who need her help. The force need her advice on the investigation of a grisly murder. However Merrily is still going through the motions of losing her late unfaithful husband, Sean, in a car crash. She seeks shelter in her job despite having a 16-year-old daughter, Jane. After the discovery of a gruesome murder, Merrily becomes convinced that Satanists are operating in the city.

9. Escape at Dannemora

   2018 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   Escape at Dannemora is based on the stranger-than-fiction prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015 which spawned a statewide manhunt for two convicted murderers, aided in their escape by a married female prison employee who carried on months-long affairs with both men.

10. 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.