Edge of Your Seat: the Best Thriller TV Series

The sustained tension of the Jennings family's double life — Soviet agents whose FBI-agent neighbour is growing increasingly suspicious — made The Americans one of the most nerve-shredding thrillers in television history. Each season raised the stakes until the final episodes delivered a conclusion that was both surprising and absolutely inevitable. Rating: 8.8/10.

At its most effective as a thriller — White Bear, Shut Up and Dance, Crocodile — Black Mirror uses technological conceits to generate dread that feels entirely plausible. The anthology format means each episode can be calibrated for maximum impact without the need to sustain a narrative across a season. Rating: 8.4/10.

Gillian Anderson's detective Stella Gibson pursues a serial killer in Belfast played by Jamie Dornan. Paul Abbott's two-season thriller is notable for its unusual structure — the audience knows who the killer is from the first episode — and for its unflinching examination of violence and gender. Rating: 8.0/10.

James Nesbitt's Tony Hughes scours Northern France and later Germany for his son Oliver, who disappeared on a holiday — a search that spans decades and destroys everything else in its wake. The BBC thriller uses time jumps with surgical precision to maximise dread and revelation. Rating: 8.0/10.

A tech billionaire is accused of murdering his sister — and the season-long legal thriller that unfolds around the trial reveals a city's interconnected systems of power and privilege. An underrated gem that uses the murder trial format with intelligence and restraint. Rating: 7.8/10.

Each episode of this Canadian crime thriller reveals both the killer and the victim in the opening minutes — the suspense comes from watching detective Angie Flynn reconstruct why the murder happened. The inverted format forces the show to find its tension elsewhere: in psychology, in character, in the accumulation of motive. Rating: 7.8/10.

Shane Smith's gonzo journalism operation translated surprisingly well to a TV thriller format — dispatching correspondents into conflict zones, criminal underworlds, and political crises to produce documentaries and narrative pieces that read like dispatches from civilisation's fault lines. Rating: 7.6/10.

The residents of a small Maine town are suddenly sealed inside an invisible dome — with no explanation, no way out, and a dwindling supply of resources. Stephen King's premise generated a tense, compulsive first season before the show expanded its mythology in ways that divided its audience. Rating: 6.6/10.

A British bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan navigates the absurdities and genuine dangers of their work. The show is a comedy-thriller hybrid that uses laughter as a pressure valve for situations that would otherwise be unbearable — and does so with rare emotional intelligence. Rating: 7.1/10.

The sustained tension of the Jennings family's double life — Soviet agents whose FBI-agent neighbour is growing increasingly suspicious — made The Americans one of the most nerve-shredding thrillers in television history. Each season raised the stakes until the final episodes delivered a conclusion that was both surprising and absolutely inevitable. Rating: 8.8/10.

At its most effective as a thriller — White Bear, Shut Up and Dance, Crocodile — Black Mirror uses technological conceits to generate dread that feels entirely plausible. The anthology format means each episode can be calibrated for maximum impact without the need to sustain a narrative across a season. Rating: 8.4/10.

Gillian Anderson's detective Stella Gibson pursues a serial killer in Belfast played by Jamie Dornan. Paul Abbott's two-season thriller is notable for its unusual structure — the audience knows who the killer is from the first episode — and for its unflinching examination of violence and gender. Rating: 8.0/10.

James Nesbitt's Tony Hughes scours Northern France and later Germany for his son Oliver, who disappeared on a holiday — a search that spans decades and destroys everything else in its wake. The BBC thriller uses time jumps with surgical precision to maximise dread and revelation. Rating: 8.0/10.

A tech billionaire is accused of murdering his sister — and the season-long legal thriller that unfolds around the trial reveals a city's interconnected systems of power and privilege. An underrated gem that uses the murder trial format with intelligence and restraint. Rating: 7.8/10.

Each episode of this Canadian crime thriller reveals both the killer and the victim in the opening minutes — the suspense comes from watching detective Angie Flynn reconstruct why the murder happened. The inverted format forces the show to find its tension elsewhere: in psychology, in character, in the accumulation of motive. Rating: 7.8/10.

Shane Smith's gonzo journalism operation translated surprisingly well to a TV thriller format — dispatching correspondents into conflict zones, criminal underworlds, and political crises to produce documentaries and narrative pieces that read like dispatches from civilisation's fault lines. Rating: 7.6/10.

The residents of a small Maine town are suddenly sealed inside an invisible dome — with no explanation, no way out, and a dwindling supply of resources. Stephen King's premise generated a tense, compulsive first season before the show expanded its mythology in ways that divided its audience. Rating: 6.6/10.

A British bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan navigates the absurdities and genuine dangers of their work. The show is a comedy-thriller hybrid that uses laughter as a pressure valve for situations that would otherwise be unbearable — and does so with rare emotional intelligence. Rating: 7.1/10.