If you think about it, Thanksgiving is all about murder. Unless you’re a vegetarian, you’re probably eating meat off the cooked carcass of some dead bird on November 28. And I’m pretty sure that animal did not go gently, or willingly, into that good night.
If that’s the case, then it’s not at all unusual to watch a good murder mystery or two during the Thanksgiving holidays. The Brits excel at this kind of thing (don’t ask me why), and the country has produced hundreds of high-quality crime shows throughout the decades. The following list is just a brief sampler of shows on a variety of streamers that you should check out while recovering from all that pumpkin pie consumption.
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Grantchester (2014 to present)
Grantchester is one of those shows that’s like an old blanket — you can pick it up and put it down easily, and when it’s on, you feel safe and cozy. Yes, it’s a bit odd to characterize a show that deals with murder as “cozy,” but that’s the unique charm of Grantchester, which is probably why it’s been on for nine seasons (and counting).
The premise is simple: The town vicar teams up with a local police detective to solve a murder, which happens quite frequently in their idyllic small town. Because it’s been on for so long, the show has cycled through three different priests: James Norton’s Sidney Chambers (seasons 1 to 4), Tom Brittney’s Will Davenport (seasons 4 to 8), and the current reverend, Rishi Nair’s Alphy Kotteram. All three are handsome, charismatic, and do stuff priests shouldn’t do (there’s far more romance in this than you’d think), but all of them need the help and friendship of Robson Green’s detective, Geordie Keating, to not only solve murders but to get through life’s tough problems.
With Grantchester, you come for the murders but stay for the quality hang time with the two leads plus a stellar supporting cast that includes Tessa Peake-Jones as the stern but loving housekeeper Sylvia and Al Weaver’s perpetually awkward novice priest, Leonard. Above all else, there’s the gorgeous English countryside to enjoy and the 1950s and early 1960s period detail to savor.
Grantchester is streaming on PBS.
Broadchurch (2013 to 2017)
It feels like everyone has seen Broadchurch, but that’s wrong; it’s just that everyone should have already seen it by now — especially its first season, which is as riveting as the genre gets. An 11-year-old turns up dead on the beach near the coastal town of Broadchurch, and it’s up to two detectives, out-of-towner Alec Hardy (Doctor Who‘s David Tennant) and local inspector Ellie Miller (a pre-Oscar Olivia Colman), to solve it. What follows is what you’d expect: Small-town secrets are revealed, and no one will ever be the same. But Broadchurch truly is shocking and revelatory, a crime show with a mystery you can’t quite figure out and characters that always seem all too human.
Season 2 isn’t as good, as it primarily deals with the fallout of the events of season 1, but it’s still worth watching. Season 3 presents a brand new mystery, one that’s almost as good as the first season’s, but the whole show is worth watching just to watch Tennant and Colman act together. These are rightly beloved actors who work superbly together, and the only downside is that there aren’t more seasons to watch them cracking more cases. Look for a pre-Wicked Jonathan Bailey in the first season as an ambitious reporter, too.
Broadchurch is streaming for free on Tubi and Peacock.
Collateral (2018)
If you want a show that’s short and relatively self-contained, you could do no worse than Collateral. The four-episode limited series has a clear beginning, middle, and ending and is focused on one mystery throughout the whole series. That mystery is the murder of Abdullah Asif, a pizza delivery boy who is gunned down one night. Yet what appears like a random act of senseless violence masks a gradually unfolding conspiracy that involves everyone from politicians in Parliament to human traffic smugglers in the underbelly of London.
Carey Mulligan (Maestro) anchors a cast of British veterans like Billie Piper, Nicola Walker, and Ben Miles, but the real star of the show is London itself. England’s greatest city shines brightly here in all its grime and glory. Collateral is a satisfying mystery that tackles a still-topical issue of illegal immigration, and it both adheres to and subverts the crime genre conventions to paint a complex portrait of an imperfect system populated with imperfect people.
Collateral is streaming on Netflix.