CineBrawlBest crime show
The 32 shows of the “Best crime show” bracket, with year, director, runtime and rating for each — then play the knockout tournament and let your own duels pick the winner.
▶ Play this tournamentWhat is in this bracket
The bracket spans 22 years of cinema, from 1999 to 2021, with an average TMDB rating of 8.2/10. The dominant genres are Crime (31 shows), Drama (31 shows), Mystery (14 shows), Action & Adventure (3 shows). Vince Gilligan appears 2 times — a good sign of how much one filmography weighs on the outcome. Watching the whole line-up back to back would take about 5 hours. The 2010s are the best represented decade with 22 entries.
The highest-rated entry going in is Breaking Bad (2008) at ★ 8.9/10 — but a bracket is not a ranking: it only takes one duel against a favourite of yours for it to go out in the first round.
The full line-up (32 shows)
Seeded in the order they enter the bracket. 32 titles means 5 rounds and 31 duels to a champion.
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The Wire
Told from the points of view of both the Baltimore homicide and narcotics detectives and their targets, the series captures a universe in which the national war on drugs has become a permanent, self-sustaining bureaucracy, and distinctions between good and evil are routinely obliterated.
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Breaking Bad
Walter White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher, is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of only two years left to live. He becomes filled with a sense of fearlessness and an unrelenting desire to secure his family's financial future at any cost as he enters the dangerous world of drugs and crime.
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The Sopranos
The story of New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads. Those difficulties are often highlighted through his ongoing professional relationship with psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi. The show features Tony's family members and Mafia associates in prominen
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Better Call Saul
Six years before Saul Goodman meets Walter White. We meet him when the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and, often, against Jimmy, is “fixer” Mike Ehrmantraut. The series tracks Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts “criminal” in “crimi
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True Detective
An American anthology police detective series utilizing multiple timelines in which investigations seem to unearth personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within or outside the law.
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Fargo
A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.
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MINDHUNTER
An agent in the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit develops profiling techniques as he pursues notorious serial killers and rapists.
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Sherlock
A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.
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Dexter
Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police also leads a secret life as a serial killer, hunting down criminals who have slipped through the cracks of justice.
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Peaky Blinders
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.
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Narcos
A gritty chronicle of the war against Colombia's infamously violent and powerful drug cartels.
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The Shield
The story of an inner-city Los Angeles police precinct where some of the cops aren't above breaking the rules or working against their associates to both keep the streets safe and their self-interests intact.
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Mare of Easttown
A detective in a small Pennsylvania town investigates a local murder while trying to keep her life from falling apart.
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Broadchurch
The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.
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The Night Of
After a night of partying with a female stranger, a man wakes up to find her stabbed to death and is charged with her murder.
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Money Heist
To carry out the biggest heist in history, a mysterious man called The Professor recruits a band of eight robbers who have a single characteristic: none of them has anything to lose. Five months of seclusion - memorizing every step, every detail, every probability - culminate in eleven days locked up in the National Coinage and Stamp Factory of Spain, surrounded by police forces and with dozens of
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Prison Break
Due to a political conspiracy, an innocent man is sent to death row and his only hope is his brother, who makes it his mission to deliberately get himself sent to the same prison in order to break the both of them out, from the inside out.
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Mr. Robot
A young programmer, Elliot, suffers from a debilitating anti-social disorder and decides that he can only connect to people by hacking them. He wields his skills as a weapon to protect the people that he cares about. Elliot finds himself in the intersection between a cybersecurity firm he works for and the underworld organizations that are recruiting him to bring down corporate America.
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Ozark
A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million in five years to appease a drug boss.
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The Killing
The Killing is an American crime drama television series based upon the Danish television series Forbrydelsen. Set in Seattle, Washington, the series follows the various murder investigations by homicide detectives Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder.
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Hannibal
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
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Bosch
Harry Bosch, an LAPD homicide detective, stands trial for the fatal shooting of a serial murder suspect. A cold case involving the remains of a missing boy forces Bosch to confront his past. As daring recruit Julia Brasher catches his eye and departmental politics heat up, Bosch will pursue justice at all costs.
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Criminal Minds
An elite team of FBI profilers analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again. The Behavioral Analysis Unit's most experienced agent is David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU who returns to help the team solve new cases.
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The Mentalist
Patrick Jane, a former celebrity psychic medium, uses his razor sharp skills of observation and expertise at "reading" people to solve serious crimes with the California Bureau of Investigation.
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.
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The Blacklist
Raymond "Red" Reddington, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests: bringing down dangerous criminals and terrorists. In the last two decades, he's made a list of criminals and terrorists that matter the most but the FBI cannot find because it does not know they exist. Reddington calls
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Marvel's Daredevil
Lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock uses his heightened senses from being blinded as a young boy to fight crime at night on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil.
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You
A dangerously charming, obsessive man goes to extreme measures to insert himself into the lives of women who fascinate him.
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Gomorrah
Based on Robert Saviano's bestselling book, this gritty Italian crime drama paints a portrait of the brutal Neapolitan crime organisation the Camorra, as seen through the eyes of Ciro Di Marzo, the obedient and self- confident right-hand man of the clan's godfather, Pietro Savastano.
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Boardwalk Empire
Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition is a place where the rules don't apply. And the man who runs things -- legally and otherwise -- is the town's treasurer, Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, who is equal parts politician and gangster.
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Luther
A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts.
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Brooklyn Nine-Nine
A single-camera ensemble comedy following the lives of an eclectic group of detectives in a New York precinct, including one slacker who is forced to shape up when he gets a new boss.
How this tournament works
- 32 shows enter a knockout bracket.
- Two titles face off at a time — you pick the one you would rather watch.
- Winners advance round by round until one champion is left: your pick for tonight.
There is no “right” answer and no algorithm deciding for you: the bracket only forces a series of small, easy comparisons instead of one impossible choice in front of a catalogue. You can also play it with friends — everyone votes the same duels from their own phone in a Brawl Room.
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