If you’ve asked the question, “Why can’t women get enough of murder mysteries?” you’ll know that the appeal isn’t necessarily the violence itself. Sometimes it’s the puzzle. Sometimes it’s the woman doing the investigating. And sometimes, perhaps, it’s simply the pleasure of knowing that the strange little detail you noticed wasn’t irrelevant after all.
Here are seven crime shows that have sustained themselves long after they went off the air, acquired cult followings, or simply refuse to leave our watchlists.
Criminal Minds (2005–2020)
This show seems unlikely to have an expiration date, considering its revival and unending streaming life. The police procedural crime drama, Criminal Minds follows a team of FBI profilers as they dig deep into the criminal psyche to prevent further crimes.
That’s precisely what makes it so bingeable. The show doesn’t merely ask, “Who did it?” It asks, “Why did they do it?” It takes viewers on a journey to unpack complicated minds and detect behavior patterns otherwise dismissed or even normalized.
For women viewers, there is an added appeal in watching characters take seemingly irrational behavior seriously. The show turns intuition into evidence — a strange fixation, an unusual ritual, a particular choice of victim — everything can become a clue.
Most episodes are standalone enough that you don’t necessarily need to start from Episode 1. Pick an episode, make tea, settle in, and prepare to distrust everyone.
The Mentalist (2008–2015)
This Simon Baker-starrer is a cult classic and still keeps viewers interested. Women viewers swear by Patrick Jane’s charm and his oft-quoted advice to Agent Lisbon (Robin Tunney): trust your gut.
The story follows Jane, a former fake psychic who works as a consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation. His real motive is to pursue Red John, the infamous serial killer who murdered his wife and daughter. Despite his twisted maneuvers, Jane’s ability to read clues, spot inconsistencies in witness testimonies, and manipulate suspects makes every case an interesting watch and also a case study on what to watch out for.
What works for the show is its empathetic angle on crime. Lisbon and her team, aided by Jane, don’t simply hunt down murderers; they dig into people’s histories, relationships, and motivations. Jane may be irritatingly patronizing at times, but the women around him are rarely reduced to helpless bystanders. Lisbon, in particular, is the team’s moral and emotional anchor.
Above all, Jane repeatedly tells women to trust their instincts. In a genre where women’s instincts are so often presented as irrational, that is oddly satisfying.
Killing Eve (2018–2022)
Killing Eve gives us something much more complicated – the woman who becomes fascinated by the killer.
Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British intelligence investigator, becomes obsessed with Villanelle (Jodi Comer), a glamorous and psychopathic assassin. What begins as an investigation slowly turns into a mutually obsessive cat-and-mouse game between two women who cannot quite decide whether they want to catch, understand, or possess each other.
This is where the murder mystery becomes something more psychologically interesting. Villanelle isn’t merely a villain to be caught. She is charismatic, funny, frightening, and occasionally absurd. Eve’s attraction to Villanelle becomes part of the investigation.
The show plays with the old fascination with dangerous men by putting women at the center. It asks what happens when the killer and the person hunting her are both women, and neither can stop watching the other.
Elementary (2012–2019)
This one isn’t as universally quoted as The Mentalist, but it has far more quality and nuance than most conventional procedurals.
A modern adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes,” Elementary reimagines Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) as a recovering drug addict working in New York, with Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) as his companion and investigative partner. Watson is an Asian-American woman, a former surgeon and, most importantly, an investigator in her own right.
The two help the NYPD solve complex crimes while negotiating their own histories and complicated relationship.
The pace is slower than many other crime shows, but that is precisely its strength. The show gives its mysteries room to breathe. It focuses on details and dialogue rather than explosions and serial killers.
And let’s face it. Watching a mixed-race female Dr. Watson outsmart a room full of men is satisfying. That’s smashing patriarchy right there.
Delhi Crime (2019– present)
Delhi Crime is perhaps the most obvious Indian addition to this list, particularly because it puts women, violence, and the tribulations of investigation at the center of the story.
The first season follows the Delhi Police investigation into the infamous 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder of a young woman. The subject matter is disturbing, but the series doesn’t turn the crime into a sensationalist spectacle. Instead, it stays with the investigators — the interviews, the evidence, the endless paperwork, the exhaustion, and the institutional obstacles that stand between a horrific crime and justice.
Shefali Shah‘s DCP Vartika Chaturvedi is particularly important here. She is neither the icy genius detective nor the emotionally compromised cop that crime fiction so often gives us. She is a woman operating inside an overwhelmingly male institution, carrying the weight of the case while also dealing with the expectations placed on her as a senior female officer.
For women viewers, there is something deeply reassuring about watching Vartika take women’s fears seriously. The show doesn’t tell us to simply “trust our gut.” It shows what happens when someone actually listens, investigates, and acts on what women have been saying.
What sets Delhi Crime apart is that it doesn’t offer the comforting fiction that catching one monster fixes everything. The violence is systemic, the investigation is messy, and justice doesn’t erase what happened.
Babita Singh Reporting (2026)
Nimisha Sajayan has a knack for playing women who look ordinary until you realize just how much they’re holding together. In Babita Singh Reporting, she plays ASI Babita Singh — or “Baby,” as almost everyone insists on calling her — a police officer who is competent enough to do the job but not confident enough to demand that anyone take her seriously.
Babita joined the police force on compassionate grounds after her father, also a police officer, was killed in the line of duty. But the uniform hasn’t exactly given her authority. At the police station, her superior, Sethi (Rajesh Kumar), cares more about getting her to shoot a reel of his dramatic motorcycle entrance than about giving her meaningful work. At home, her husband, Sharad (Anshumaan Pushkar), and his family aren’t much better. Babita is expected to be agreeable, accommodating, and available—the kind of woman who says yes before she’s even asked.
Things change when Babita gets herself suspended to secure leave to attend her sister-in-law’s baby shower in Rewa. There, she reconnects with her childhood friend Bansi, an idol maker played by Barun Sobti. Bansi is murdered that very night, and when the local police show little urgency in investigating his death, Babita begins asking questions of her own. What starts as concern for an old friend soon turns into an unofficial investigation.
The show isn’t concerned simply with who killed Bansi. It’s Babita who has to work around indifferent police officers, dismissive relatives, family secrets, and a husband who isn’t particularly thrilled by her sudden determination to investigate. The murder forces her to confront not only the people around her but also the version of herself she has spent years suppressing.
For women, perhaps the most satisfying part of Babita Singh Reporting is watching Babita gradually stop being “Baby.”Her investigation into Bansi’s death is therefore also an investigation into her own life: Why has she spent so long allowing other people to decide what she can do, say, and want?
Mare of Easttown (2021)
This award-winning miniseries is remembered not only for Kate Winslet‘s raw, unsettling performance but also for its fantastic writing.
Winslet plays Mare Sheehan, a troubled police detective investigating the murder of a teenage girl while her own life is falling apart. Based in a small Pennsylvanian town, the show explores trauma, bullying, addiction, grief, family, motherhood, and the suffocating intimacy of a community where everybody knows everybody else’s business.
Mare is not the glamorous, impossibly composed female detective we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. She’s exhausted, grieving, and irritable. She makes mistakes and has a complicated relationship with her daughter and mother. She is, in other words, a person. And that is precisely why women can relate to her.
Mare of Easttown understands that solving a murder doesn’t magically fix the world around it. Sometimes the detective goes home to the same broken family, the same grief, and the same town after catching the killer.
Castle (2009–2016)
Quite a commercial and glamorous show for the list, but Castle was a favorite of women viewers while it was on air and retains an impressive repeat value.
Detective Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic, is the real draw. She is competent, resolute, and entirely capable of running an investigation while surrounded by men who occasionally underestimate her. The story begins when crime novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) becomes involved with the NYPD after a series of murders resembling those in his novels. Using his connections with the Mayor, he becomes a consultant to Beckett.
Of course, their romance takes over the plot more often than it should. But the show also builds a long-running mystery around Beckett’s mother’s murder and introduces memorable serial-killer arcs such as 3XK.
As a show, Castle has considerably less meat than Elementary or Mare of Easttown, and it relies heavily on the Caskett romance. But perhaps that’s part of its charm. Sometimes a woman wants to solve a murder, flirt with a handsome man, and have dinner with him afterward. We wish Beckett did just that with Castle.
Maybe there’s another reason murder mysteries work so well for women. We don’t just want to know who did it. Sometimes, we want to watch a woman finally ask, “Why have I been putting up with this?”
List Courtesy of Neha Jha
Feature Image Credit to BBC
Neha Jha
Neha is a storyteller, podcaster, and movie buff who also loves music and dance. She read books and keeps a look-out for good adaptations on screen. Let her know if there's something good in the horror genre 'cos she loves…
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