How the Crime Shows bracket works
Rank crime shows without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Breaking Bad or The Wire? The Sopranos or True Detective? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. A straight list invites you to hedge. A matchup does not, and that is what makes the final 24-deep order worth screenshotting.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 shows in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. Entrants are drawn at random each time, so an early upset in one run may never happen in the next. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos and True Detective.
Breaking Bad
2008-2013
The Wire
2002-2008
The Sopranos
1999-2007
True Detective
2014-present
Mindhunter
2017-2019
Narcos
2015-2017
Fargo
2014-present
Ozark
2017-2022
Better Call Saul
2015-2022
Peaky Blinders
2013-2022
Line of Duty
2012-2021
Dexter
2006-2013
Luther
2010-2019
Law & Order: SVU
1999-present
Criminal Minds
2005-present
NCIS
2003-present
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
2000-2015
Broadchurch
2013-2017
Killing Eve
2018-2022
The Blacklist
2013-2023
Sherlock
2010-2017
Mare of Easttown
2021
The Shield
2002-2008
Only Murders in the Building
2021-present
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 3 completed Crime Shows brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Criminal Minds
8W - 2L · won 1 bracket
80%
win rate
- 2
Fargo
4W - 1L · won 1 bracket
80%
win rate
- 3
Only Murders in the Building
4W - 1L · won 1 bracket
80%
win rate
- 4
Dexter
3W - 1L
75%
win rate
- 5
Breaking Bad
5W - 3L
63%
win rate
- 6
The Blacklist
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
Luther
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 8
Law & Order: SVU
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 9
Broadchurch
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 10
Better Call Saul
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Judge the whole run, not just the best season, or every prestige show wins by default.
- 2The default run puts all 24 shows in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Watch for the show you keep beating reluctantly. That is usually the sign you should undo and reconsider the pick before it.
Crime Shows bracket FAQ
How many shows are in the Crime Shows bracket?
The pool holds 24 shows. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which shows are included?
Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, True Detective, Mindhunter, Narcos, Fargo, Ozark, Better Call Saul, Peaky Blinders, Line of Duty and Dexter, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank crime shows take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. There is no sign-up and nothing is stored until you reach the final.
Is this a crime shows tier list or a ranking?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other show grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two shows that never met. If you would rather place the shows into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Is there a community crime shows ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Crime Shows community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I change which shows are included?
Use the bracket maker: add your own shows, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.