This Is the Best Detective Show of All Time

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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There has been a crime. Someone must be punished. The detective is part of the hide-and-seek plots in books, on television and in movies. At the end of these, the question is answered, does the detective, man or woman, bring the villain to justice? The formula is simple and has been used across the decades, since televisions began to appear in U.S. households.

To determine the best detective show in TV history, 24/7 Tempo considered audience reviews from the Internet Movie Database. The best detective shows have redefined the genre, putting their own spin on what a detective show can be. Some are funny, some are dark and gritty, and some have psychologists, supernatural healers and even murderers serving in the detective role.

To determine the best detective shows in TV history, shows with the detective keyword tag or crime genre label on IMDb were ranked based on the average IMDb user rating. Only shows with at least 5,000 user ratings that have a rating from the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board were considered. We excluded shows that have detective characters but are not explicitly centered around detective or investigative work. Data were collected in November 2021.
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The best detective show in TV history is “The Wire.” Here are the details:

  • IMDb user rating: 9.3/10
  • IMDb user votes: 308,603
  • Series run: 2002 to 2008
  • Starring: Dominic West, Lance Reddick, Sonja Sohn, Wendell Pierce

With an IMDb user rating of 9.3, “The Wire” ranks as the best detective show in TV history. The HBO drama follows Baltimore detectives, as well as the drug dealers they pursue.

Click here to see all the best detective shows of all time.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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