With this peculiar type of comfort in mind, here’s a list of some of the superlative crime-drama binges from the past decade that are available to stream. There are plenty of high-profile shows with similar attention to psychological depth (Better Call Saul, Unbelievable, American Crime, When They See Us, Fargo, Mindhunter, True Detective), but for the most part I’ve tried to stay away from obvious choices, to highlight some undersung options instead, grouped according to the things crime series do best. Not all are strict procedurals. Nor is this list exhaustive (The Bridge, Wallander, Borgen, and Trapped are among those deserving of their own inventory). Hopefully, though, you’ll find at least one or two new options to consider.

twisty and propulsive THRILLERS

luther

It’s hard to imagine Luther functioning so well without Idris Elba, whose ability to radiate ennui and gravitas while stalking through London in a gray tweed jacket is at least half the show’s appeal. Everything else in Neil Cross’s five-season series, which debuted in 2010, is ludicrous, Victorian-novel excess: serial killers in LED masks, occult blood fetishists, psychopathic academics with oral fixations who murder their entire families, right down to the dog, for attention. It’s the latter, Alice Morgan—a depraved genius played with operatic lunacy by Ruth Wilson—who becomes the Hannibal to Luther’s Clarice Starling, popping up to aid him and occasionally opine on the intricacies of the criminal mind. For all its absurdities, this is a series where the momentum rarely falters.

Watch it on: Hulu

The fall

Before Killing Eve, the knottiest cat-and-mouse game on television was between the icily glamorous Detective Inspector Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and the swaggering serial killer in sweatpants, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan). In the first season of the show, Gibson flew to Belfast to help investigate the murders of several young women, all of them committed by Spector, whose criminality The Fall revealed from the beginning. The narrative engine driving the show isn’t whodunit; it’s whether Gibson will solve the case before Spector strikes again, and whether either can curtail their growing obsession with the other. Anderson has never been more compelling as Gibson, a woman whose brilliance is grounded partly in her gender, and her ability to comprehend the psychology of a misogynist murderer. In the third and final season, The Fall veers slightly off the rails, but the first two alone make it worth watching.

Watch it on: Netflix

informer

For all the consolation of shows that stick to a formula, the ones that upend generic conventions can be even more gratifying. The hero of Informer isn’t Detective Sergeant Gabe Waters (Paddy Considine), a London counterterrorism officer trying to crack a ring behind attacks in other European cities. It’s Raza (played brilliantly by Nabhaan Rizwan), a second-generation British Pakistani man whom Gabe—in an act of callous ethnic stereotyping—coerces into informing on potential terrorists in his community, and who’s by far the show’s most sympathetic character. (“I don’t know any terrorists, bruv!” Raza exclaims in protest. “Not yet, but you will,” Gabe replies.) Even the ways in which Informer tweaks the visuals of London-set shows feel fresh—there are far more panoramic portrayals of Shoreditch streets and East London council estates than sweeping vistas of the Thames. And as the show barrels towards its climactic finale, it never loses sight of which people are victimized in the official quest to keep everyone else safe.