Shows Like
Shows Like Mindhunter: Methodical Criminal Psychology
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
Mindhunter ran two seasons on Netflix, from October 2017 to August 2019, and it has never been topped at the specific thing it does: sitting two FBI agents across a table from a killer and letting the conversation do the work. If that is what you are chasing, most crime shows will disappoint you. Procedurals want a chase. Mindhunter wanted a transcript.
So the bar for this list is narrow on purpose. Every pick below has at least two of the three things Mindhunter had: interviews or interrogations that carry entire episodes, an investigator who is visibly damaged by the material, and a refusal to make violence exciting. I have noted what each one shares, what it does differently, and who it suits. Where it streams changes month to month, so the title page on BingeNext shows current US options rather than a promise I cannot keep.
If you came for the interviews
Hannibal (NBC, 2013 to 2015, three seasons) is the closest thing to Mindhunter's therapy-room tension, only the killer is charming you instead of a prisoner in a jumpsuit. Mads Mikkelsen plays Lecter as a man conducting an experiment on Will Graham, and half the show is two people talking in a beautiful office. The difference is that Hannibal is operatic and stylised where Mindhunter was flat and clinical. Choose it if you want the psychology but do not mind gorgeous, dreamlike horror around it.
The Sinner (USA Network, 2017 to 2021, four seasons) hands you the crime in the first ten minutes and spends the rest of the season asking why. Bill Pullman's detective is less an investigator than an unlicensed therapist who cannot leave people alone. Each season is a self-contained case, so you can start with any of them, though season one is still the sharpest. It is more sentimental than Mindhunter, and that is the trade.
Des (ITV, 2020, three episodes) is the purest interview show on this list. David Tennant plays Dennis Nilsen, who confessed immediately and then spent months talking, and the drama is entirely about police and a biographer trying to make sense of a man who will not perform remorse. Three hours, no filler, no chase. If Mindhunter's best scenes were the ones where nothing happened, start here.
If you came for the damaged investigator
The Fall (BBC Two, 2013 to 2016, three seasons) shows you the killer in episode one and then makes you watch Gillian Anderson's Stella Gibson build a case with paperwork and patience. It is colder than Mindhunter and more interested in how institutions handle women, both as victims and as officers. Slower too, which is saying something.
Mare of Easttown (HBO, 2021, seven episodes) stars Kate Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a Pennsylvania detective whose life is coming apart in the same town where she is working a murder. The investigation is competent rather than brilliant, which is the point. Take it if you want the exhaustion of the job without the serial-killer taxonomy.
Sharp Objects (HBO, 2018, eight episodes) sends Amy Adams back to her hometown to report on two murders and immediately drowns her in her own family. It is a mood piece more than a case, edited so that memory intrudes constantly. Choose it when you want dread rather than method.
Broadchurch (ITV, 2013 to 2017, three seasons) is the small-town version: one dead boy, one grieving community, two detectives who cannot stand each other at first. Season three, which follows a sexual assault investigation, is the most procedurally careful British crime drama I know. Warmer than Mindhunter, and better on how a town behaves under suspicion.
If you came for the era and the method
The Alienist (TNT, 2018 to 2020, two seasons) is criminal profiling before anyone called it that, set in 1896 New York, with a psychologist, a newspaper illustrator and a police secretary building the science from scratch. It is more plot-driven and considerably more lurid than Mindhunter, but the intellectual project is the same. Good for people who liked the idea that profiling had to be invented by somebody.
Manhunt (2017, then a second run in 2020) dramatises the Unabomber case through forensic linguistics, an FBI profiler pulling a suspect out of the language in a manifesto. It is the most literally methodical show here, and the least glamorous. Sam Worthington's agent goes the same way Holden Ford does, which is to say badly.
Forbrydelsen (DR1, Denmark, 2007 to 2012, three seasons), known in English as The Killing, spends twenty episodes on a single murder and refuses to hurry. Sofie Grabol's Sarah Lund is the original obsessive who lets her life rot around a case. The subtitles are the only barrier. Everything else is the Mindhunter pace, done first.
Criminal Minds (2005 to present, nineteen seasons aired as of September 2026) is the mass-market cousin, and I include it with a caveat. It is a case-of-the-week show and it uses profiling as a magic trick rather than a discipline. But if you want hundreds of hours of behavioural analysis you can dip into with no commitment, nothing else on this list gives you that.
Where to start
If you want the interview scenes above all, watch Des first, then Hannibal. If you want the toll the work takes on the person doing it, start with The Fall and follow it with Mare of Easttown. If you want the invention of the method itself, The Alienist and Manhunt are the pair. And if you simply want volume, Criminal Minds is sitting there with nineteen seasons and no expectations.
Want a shortlist built from your own taste instead of mine? Drop Mindhunter and two or three other shows you loved into BingeNext's TV recommendations, and you will get picks with a reason attached and where each one streams. Results take about a minute.
Topics covered: crime-thriller, psychology, investigation, drama, dark, netflix
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About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.