Southland

Series Similar to Southland

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

1. Without a Trace

   2002 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile.

   Without a Trace is a fast-paced procedural drama about the Missing Persons Squad of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The sole responsibility of the special task force is to find missing persons by applying advanced psychological profiling techniques to peel back the layers of the victims' lives and trace their whereabouts in an effort to discover whether they have been abducted, been murdered, committed suicide, or simply run away. The team reconstructs a "Day of Disappearance" timeline that details every minute of the 24 hours prior to the disappearance, following one simple rule: learn who the victim is in order to learn where the victim is. Senior agent Jack Malone heads the dedicated team that knows too well that every second counts when someone vanishes.

2. 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.

3. Breaking Bad

   2008 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

   Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. The Killing

   2011 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

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

   The Killing follows Seattle homicide detectives Stephen Holder and Sarah Linden and their work as detectives investigating murders. Sarah Linden takes cases very seriously and has issues keeping her work and family separate, as she pairs up with recovering addict Stephen Holder to solve dark murders.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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?

10. Mr. Robot

    2015 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · ended

    Recommended for similar Crime / Thriller profile, highly rated (8.3).

    Mr. Robot follows Elliot, a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and as a vigilante hacker by night. Elliot finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the firm he is paid to protect. Compelled by his personal beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the chance to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are running (and ruining) the world.