Television series

The Killing

Name: The Killing
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
Released: 2011
Cast: Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman, Billy Campbell, Brent Sexton, Eric Ladin

Other titles called The Killing: the 1956 film.

A single murder — a teenage girl, a lake, a rain that never lets up — stretched across a whole season, because The Killing cares less about who did it than what solving it costs everyone touched by it. Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are a mismatched, quietly devastating pair. It's slow, bleak, and Seattle-grey; watch it for mood and grief, not twists.

TVMaze rating

4.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love slow-burn crime stories where the investigation is really a study of grief, stubbornness and a partnership that frays under pressure, and you don't mind a case spilling across whole seasons.

Skip it if you want a case closed by the end of each hour; the show lingers on rain-soaked streets, long silences and a single murder that drags on far longer than most mysteries allow.

What it asks of you: Forty-four hour-long episodes spread over four seasons, unhurried and heavy in tone, asking you to stay with its quiet scenes and let the dread build rather than hunting for quick payoffs.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Broadchurch2013

The closest thing to a sibling show: one child's murder, one small coastal town, and a detective pairing (Tennant and Colman) that carries the same wary, unspoken chemistry as Linden and Holder.

But It leans harder into melodrama by the end, and the reveal machinery shows a bit more than The Killing's did.

True Detective2014

Season one gives you the same swampy, obsessive slow-burn — two damaged detectives, a case that won't resolve cleanly, and a sense of place so thick it becomes a character.

But More macho and philosophical, less interested in victims' families — it's a different kind of grief altogether.

Top of the Lake2013

Jane Campion's remote-town murder mystery has the same unhurried dread and a female detective who's just as haunted and just as good at her job as Linden.

But Even bleaker and stranger, with a sexual-violence plotline that's tough, unflinching viewing.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Killing

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Twin Peaks1990

Literal genre ancestor: the same setting, the same premise, the same slow unraveling of a town's secrets — just filtered through dream logic instead of procedure.

Before Linden, there was Laura Palmer — a dead girl, a small Pacific Northwest town, a whole community forced to look at itself. Lynch invented the mood The Killing borrows.

But It goes surreal and supernatural fast; if you want grounded realism, this will actively frustrate you.

The Bridge2010

The Scandinavian original that this whole mood belongs to — a cross-border murder case, a mismatched pair of detectives, and the same patient, rain-slicked pacing.

But Subtitled and even more glacial in places; commit to the slow burn or don't start.

Mare of Easttown2021

Kate Winslet's small-town detective is drowning in the same way Linden is — case and family collapsing into each other, community grief rendered without sentiment.

But Warmer and funnier in the margins than The Killing ever allowed itself to be.

Happy Valley2014

Sarah Lancashire's Yorkshire sergeant carries the same exhausted, personal stake in every case; British, blunt, and devastating in its ordinariness.

But Faster-moving and angrier than The Killing's mournful crawl — a different emotional register entirely.

The Fall2013

Gillian Anderson's detective versus Jamie Dornan's killer plays the same cat-and-mouse patience, trading whodunit for a queasier, more intimate kind of dread.

But You know the killer from episode one, so the pleasure is different — dread, not mystery.

Fargo2014

Same regional specificity and moral seriousness dressed in Coen-brothers irony — each season is its own contained, character-first crime story.

But Considerably darker humour and more violence; it's playing a different game than The Killing's grief-first realism.

Prime Suspect1991

Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison is the ancestor of every difficult, brilliant female detective on this list — procedural detail with real institutional and personal cost.

But Early-90s pacing and production feel dated next to the atmosphere-heavy shows it inspired.

The Staircase2022

Where The Killing dramatizes ambiguity, this documents it: the same question — can you ever really know what happened — asked with no writer's room to answer it for you.

A real murder investigated over eight years with the camera embedded in the defense team — the same accumulation of doubt, ambiguity, and unresolved dread, but nobody's acting.

But No plot, no score, no catharsis — just a legal process that refuses to give you certainty.

Zodiac2007

Same engine, different clock: instead of one season for one crime, one film for years of futile obsession — the toll of the unsolved case, compressed rather than stretched.

Fincher's true-crime film compresses years of obsessive, unresolved investigation into two and a half hours — the same slow poison of a case that eats the people trying to solve it.

But It deliberately withholds a satisfying answer, which some find bracing and others find maddening.