British Mystery Series to Watch Right Now
Need a new mystery to start watching now? Whether you’re in the mood for gritty crime, political thrillers, or period murder; Shaun Evans or Anya Taylor Joy; forensics, rotary phones, or corsets, MASTERPIECE has murder and mayhem all queued up.
You can watch all the mysteries below with PBS Passport, an added member benefit when you join your local PBS station. PBS Passport gives you extended access to an on-demand library of select MASTERPIECE shows and other PBS favorites. Find your next binge-watch mystery below, categorized by Contemporary, Post War, or Period Drama. After that, your only question—besides whodunit—will be what to watch next!
Is PBS Passport still a mystery? Find out more today!
Note: Full episode streaming is only available within the United States.
Contemporary Mysteries
Annika, Season 1 | Watch Now
In this Scottish noir crime drama with a wry wit, Unforgotten‘s Nicola Walker trades in cold cases for maritime murders in six riveting, unexpected episodes.
Investigator: DI Annika Strandhed is the droll and dry-witted skipper of Glasgow’s newly-formed Marine Homicide Unit, who drops literary references, breaks the fourth wall, and keeps viewers guessing through twists and turns galore.
Crime Scene: Glasgow’s River Clyde and its banks are the site of the unlikely, and even baroque, murders that Annika and her team are tasked with solving.
Time of Death: While literary sources inspiring Annika range from classics to classical mythology, the show is firmly rooted in 21st century Glasgow—especially so for Annika’s rebellious teenage daughter!
DNA: Annika is based on the BBC Radio 4 drama Annika Strandhed, which also starred Nicola Walker in the title role, but was set in Oslo.
Guilt, Seasons 1-2 | Watch Now
Two bickering, mismatched siblings haplessly attempt to cover up a deadly accident in four gripping episodes that make for a high wire balancing act between pitch-black comedy and a suburban noir thriller.
The Suspects: Guilt‘s two guilty brothers are polar opposites: the affluent, short-tempered, take-charge lawyer Max (Mark Bonnar, Unforgotten Season 2, Home Fires, Catastrophe), and the affable former musician who’s failed to launch, Jake (Jamie Sives, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones).
Crime Scene: Edinburgh’s sleepy suburbs and its hipster neighborhood of Leith
Time of Death: While Guilt‘s surveillance technology places it squarely in the present moment, Jake’s vinyl record store and the show’s amazing music add a rich texture of roots and rock.
Van der Valk, Season 1-2 | Watch Now
In three gripping 90-minute episodes, Van der Valk and his colleagues face a trio of challenging cases set in Amsterdam, a city of bikes, boats…and bodies.
Investigator: Steely-eyed, street-smart, and unapologetic, detective Piet Van der Valk (Marc Warren, Beecham House) investigates high profile cases and gritty murders
Crime Scene: Amsterdam’s canals, galleries, bars, and industrial areas, where the city’s stylishness and toleration go hand in hand with murder.
Time of Death: This is decidedly 21st-century Amsterdam: more prosperous, cosmopolitan, and crime-prone than ever!
DNA: Van der Valk reboots the wildly popular series original series, which ran on British television from 1972 to 1992, and was based on author Nicolas Freeling’s legendary crime thrillers.
Baptiste, Season 1-2 | Watch Now
The case of a missing person is not what it seems in this gripping, plot-twisting procedural that brings French detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) to Amsterdam for one last case.
Investigator: Retired detective Julien Baptiste, recovered from a brain tumor and walking with a limp, claims he’s “not the man I used to be.” But will his transformation hinder—or help—him to find the truth?
Crime Scene: The seedy criminal underbelly of Amsterdam’s Red Light district.
Time of Death: With society’s maladies like drug and human trafficking thrown in sharp relief, this mystery couldn’t be more contemporary.
DNA: Baptiste is a spinoff of The Missing, in which Julien Baptiste worked to find a missing child. The Missing‘s many loyal fans will relish seeing the stubborn, stolid detective return, but new viewers need not have watched a single minute of The Missing to fully appreciate the intense experience of Baptiste.
Unforgotten, Seasons 1-4 | Watch Now
Can anyone escape the past, or can it resurface to engulf you at any time? In this totally unique, slow burner mystery, DCI Stuart and DI Khan investigate core suspects whose lives have—until now—moved on from the sins of the past.
Investigators: Detective duo DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan are determined and, for the most part, demon-free. She’s clever and canny, but it’s Cassie’s stillness and deep dedication to solving cold cases that make her an archeologist of the buried secret and human heart.
Crime Scene: The investigation unravels in locations as diverse as the suspects themselves, from the cellar of a demolished building to the halls of Westminster.
Time of Death: This contemporary whodunit has all the current forensics and technology, but flashbacks take you back to a gritty ’70s counterculture and the coke-fueled hedonism of the ’80s, with gangsters, skinheads, and IRA plots stirring up suspects’ and victims’ lives.
DNA: Unforgotten shares DNA with Cold Case in its reopening of old murders, but has more in common with mysteries like Broadchurch and Happy Valley in their exploration of the lives of suspects with secrets…although detectives Stuart and Khan are, happily, dysfunction-free.
Magpie Murders | Watch Now
In a beguiling twist on the traditional whodunit, murder and mayhem go meta with a delightfully suspenseful mystery-within-a-mystery in Magpie Murders, which centers on an unfinished mystery manuscript that plunges its editor into a shocking case concerning the book’s unpleasant, prima donna author.
Investigators: Susan Ryeland, book editor turned amateur sleuth, and fictional detective Atticus Pünd, “the world’s greatest detective.”
Crime Scene: The cozy fictional village of Saxby-on-Avon and the bustling city of London.
Time of Death: Magpie Murders weaves expertly between two interlocking time periods: the 1950s and the present day.
DNA: Magpie Murders was adapted from author Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling book by the author himself.
Postwar Mysteries
Grantchester, Seasons 1-7 | Watch Now
Amateur sleuth and vicar Sidney Chambers, and later, his successor, Will Davenport, solve murders alongside Inspector Geordie Keating in the bucolic village of Grantchester.
Investigators: Jazz-loving Reverend Sidney Chambers (James Norton) can’t help but fall into more worldly habits as he assists friend and actual detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Greene) in solving murders, all the while searching for justice, spiritual fulfillment, love, and a really hip jazz club. After Sidney’s (Season 4) departure from Grantchester, his successor, Will Davenport (Tom Brittney), arrives via motorcycle, ready don the “dog collar” but keep his leather jacket—and his vows of celibacy—as he reluctantly finds himself helping Geordie unravel yet another mystery!
Crime Scene: Grantchester, the picturesque village on the river Cam.
Time of Death: The series is soaked in the 1950s, from the fabulous clothes to the swinging jazz to challenges of adjusting to life post war.
DNA: Grantchester is based on The Grantchester Mysteries, a series of acclaimed novels by James Runcie.
Endeavour, Seasons 1-8 | Watch Now
Before his signature red Jaguar, before Inspector Morse, there was Detective Constable Endeavour Morse, conducting his dogged, incorruptible pursuit of justice from the shadows of Oxford and the fringes of the police force.
Investigator: The cerebral, solitary DC Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) solves crossword puzzles and grisly murders in an unlikely partnership with DI Fred Thursday (Roger Allum).
Crime Scene: Oxford’s spires and grassy quads, often its pubs, and all too often, its morgues.
Time of Death: The 1960s, replete with miniskirts, trippy parties, counter-culture demonstrations, and an anachronistic, straight-laced police force.
DNA: Twenty-five years after the debut of Inspector Morse, writer Russell Davies (also the screenwriter behind the Morse spinoff Inspector Lewis) penned the prequel Endeavour, with the input and blessing of Morse creator Colin Dexter. So strong is the Morse DNA in this show that Oxford’s intrepid journalist Dorothea Frazil is played by Abigail Thaw, daughter of the original Morse actor John Thaw; plus, every episode has a hidden Colin Dexter Easter egg, for fans who, like their favorite detectives, miss nothing.
Prime Suspect: Tennison | Watch Now
Behind every great detective is a backstory. Prime Suspect: Tennison‘s Jane Tennison is a rookie cop on her way to becoming the savvy, single-minded crime fighter immortalized by Helen Mirren and beloved by Prime Suspect viewers.
Investigator: 22-year-old Rookie policewoman Jane Tennison (Stephanie Martini) is a smart and ambitious fledgling police constable expected to make tea and let the men hunt down the killers.
Crime Scene: The east London borough of Hackney, pre-gentrification.
Time of Death: 1973, as evidenced by the decade’s avocado and gold palettes, gas-guzzler cars, afros, sideburns, and institutional sexism.
DNA: Based on the book Tennison by Prime Suspect creator and writer Lynda La Plante, the prequel offers a backstory to Helen Mirren’s hard-drinking, overworked, and iconic DCI.
Period Mysteries
Miss Scarlet and The Duke, Season 1-2 | Watch Now
Miss Scarlet and The Duke, starring Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin, is a high-octane, smart and sassy mystery series filled set in 1882 Victorian London.
Period: Gritty, foggy, Victorian London, which abounds with enough ruffians, corruption, and underground gangs keep Scotland Yard overworked (and to delight the most discerning mystery fan).
Drama: Eliza Scarlet is the whip-smart daughter of renowned London private detective Henry Scarlet, who raised her to believe that she might one day follow in his footsteps. When Henry suddenly dies, a heartbroken Eliza discovers his considerable debts, and her only option for survival is to take on the family business. Over Season 1’s six mysteries, aspiring detective faces all manner of obstacles, from Victorian conventions to the efforts of her rakish and wily longtime friend/competition/potential love interest, William Wellington (aka The Duke)!
Death Comes to Pemberley | Watch Now
Six years into Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s happy marriage, a coach races up to Darcy’s palatial estate with an hysterical Lydia Wickham shrieking, “Murder!” So continues Jane Austen’s timeless classic, Pride and Prejudice, in an adaptation of crime-writer P.D. James’ bestselling whodunit as star-studded (Matthew Goode, Jenna Coleman, James Norton) as it is thrilling.
Period: The Regency period, with its excesses, rigid social strata, and fantastic ball gowns.
Drama: On the eve of Pemberley’s annual ball, new and beloved iconic characters of Pride and Prejudice assemble to bask in the warm glow of the Darcy’s sumptuous estate. But following Lydia’s frantic arrival and an investigation into Pemberley’s woods, a nightmare ensues and a scandal mounts, threatening Pemberley and all the Darcys hold dear.
