Shades of Blue

Series Similar to Shades of Blue

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

1. The Cleaning Lady

   2022 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   When whip-smart Cambodian doctor Thony De La Rosa comes to the United States for medical treatment to save her ailing son, she soon discovers her path won't be as straightforward as she had hoped. As the system quickly fails her, pushing her into hiding, she resolves not to allow herself to be beaten down and marginalized, and becomes a cleaning lady for organized crime. Using her cunning and intelligence, Thony forges her own path in the criminal underworld, doing whatever she has to to survive.

2. New York Undercover

   1994 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   New York Undercover is an American television police procedural series chronicling the work of the New York Police Department's 4th Precinct. It ran for four seasons on the FOX network from 1994 to 1998. Filmed on location in New York, NYU is a show about a squad of young urban detectives, J.C. Williams, a recently separated cop trying to be a good father to his son, and Eddie Torres, a young Puerto Rican who struggles with his heritage, who work the streets of New York undercover. Despite all the pain and troubles they go through with their lives, whether it involved their cases or home life, at the end of the day, they relax to the smooth music performed by different artists at Natalie's.

3. Aquarius

   2015 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, hidden gem, also on NBC.

   It's 1967 and the era of free love, drug experimentation and Vietnam is in full effect. When the teenage daughter of a respected lawyer goes missing, LA Police Sergeant Sam Hodiak starts asking around. He soon discovers that the hippie kids he's questioning don't take kindly to cops, especially one with hair as short as his. Needing the help of someone they trust, he partners with rebellious undercover cop Brian Shafe, a man who's more comfortable rolling a joint than patrolling a beat. It's not long before they stumble upon a small-time cult leader seeking out vulnerable women to join his cause. From there, they follow this man's trail down a rabbit hole of drugs, sex, murder and cultural revolution.

4. Low Winter Sun

   2013 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   Low Winter Sun is a contemporary story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption in a world where the line between cops and criminals is blurred. The series begins with the murder of a cop by a fellow Detroit detective. Seemingly the perfect crime, in reality the murder activates forces that will forever alter the detective's life, and pull him into the heart of the Detroit underworld.

5. Prodigal Son

   2019 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   Prodigal Son centers on Malcolm Bright who has a gift. He knows how killers think, how their minds work. Why? Back in the ‘90s, his father was one of the worst–a notorious serial killer called "The Surgeon." That's why Bright is the best criminal psychologist around; murder is the family business. Bright uses his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve crimes and stop killers, all while dealing with a manipulative mother, annoyingly normal sister, a homicidal father still looking to bond with his prodigal son, and his own constantly evolving neuroses.

6. 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.

7. StartUp

   2016 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   The series explores what happens when a brilliant, yet controversial tech idea gets incubated on the wrong side of the tracks by three strangers who don't necessarily fit the mold of "tech entrepreneurs." Set amongst the unconstrained, yet opportunist streets of Miami, StartUp weaves a complex and exciting narrative, featuring the high-stakes struggle of what one will do to reach ultimate success. Forced to fund a tech company with dirty money from unsuspecting places while forming ties with a dangerous, Haitian gang, the fight to build a business pales in comparison to the fight to stay alive, especially when there's a vehement FBI agent who wields the power to make or break those he comes in contact with—and not always for the right reasons.

8. Absentia

   2017 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime profile.

   Absentia centers on an FBI agent who, while hunting one of Boston's most notorious serial killers, disappears without a trace and is declared dead. Six years later, she is found in a cabin in the woods, barely alive and with no memory of the years she was missing. Returning home to learn her husband has remarried and her son is being raised by another woman, she soon finds herself implicated in a new series of murders.

9. Life

   2007 · Drama, Crime · ended

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

   A detective gets a second chance after serving twelve years in prison for a crime he did not commit. 

10. Banished

    2015 · Drama, Crime · ended

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

    At its heart, Banished is a story of survival. Though it is set in the stark historical reality of the founding of the penal colony in Australia in 1788 after the arrival of the First Fleet, it is not the story of Australia and how it came to be. Rather, it is a tale of love, faith, justice and morality played out on an epic scale in a confined community where the stakes are literally life and death.