8 Best Network Procedurals on TV Right Now

Published Oct 29, 2026, 11:37 AM EDT

Christine is a freelance writer for Collider with two decades of experience covering all types of TV shows and movies spanning every genre. With a particular affinity for dramas, true crime, sitcoms, and thrillers, if it's a top TV show, Christine has likely watched it and is eager to share her thoughts. When she's not furiously writing away, you can find her enjoying the next binge obsession with a glass of wine in front of the TV.

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Once you have binged your way through all available episodes of a hot new or returning streaming TV show, what's left? There's always sports and news, but network procedurals are the gift that keeps on giving. There are so many of them, and they run the gamut from intense action-based ones to shows that skew more towards comedy.

Whatever you're in the mood for watching, rest assured there will be a network procedural airing to watch. If you are looking for something newer, you have your pick of the litter, but some are better than others. And two of the best aren't exactly new, with more than two dozen seasons to their names. But they're still so good, so relevant, that they're worth watching even if you just start now.

'R.J. Decker' (2026–Present)

Image via ABC

One of the best new and most underrated procedural crime dramas on television right now is R.J. Decker. Now in its second season, the series harkens back to the days of shows like Magnum P.I. and Miami Vice, largely thanks to its sunny setting of Florida and its breezy lead character. The title character, played by Scott Speedman, isn't a cop, he's an ex-con and now a private detective who is reacclimating to civilian life after serving time in jail. He has a particular knack for investigating cases, a sense of fearlessness, and an irresistible charm.

Each episode follows his investigations alongside his ex-wife's new wife, Mel (Bevin Bru). Many of these risk both his safety and his freedom, since R.J. sometimes has to bend the law to get what he needs. He's complemented by likable characters like his former cellmate and friend "Wish" (Kevin Rankin), who will do just about anything for his bud, and his once love interest and friend Emi (Jaina Lee Ortiz), who is ironically the woman who lied to get him put away in the first place. If you've ever heard of the "Florida Man" meme, R.J. Decker leans into this heavily into it with some of the most bizarre cases of any procedural. It's delightful to watch, a refreshing change from the usual more serious tone of procedurals.

'Tracker' (2024–Present)

Image via CBS

Think of Tracker as the much less violent and profane network version of Reacher. Justin Hartley is Colter Shaw, a lone wolf survivalist who works with a remote team to track down missing persons for reward money. He often works with the local police wherever he might be in the U.S., sharing information while they welcome his assistance after seeing how good he is at what he does.

Tracker, which is poised to become one of the best CBS shows of all time, explores stories of Colter's own personal life, too. Now in its fourth season, the show is starting to dive into deeper stories of other characters as well, like his friend and skilled lawyer Reenie (Fiona Rene). Despite the major cast shake-ups since Season 1, Tracker is coming into its own and showing that the action drama has staying power. It has the familiar formulaic tone of a procedural with added action and intrigue that makes it a cut above the usual.

'Cupertino' (2026–Present)

Image via CBS

One of the most refreshing new series about Silicon Valley since, well, Silicon Valley, Cupertino is a legal drama that's heavily entrenched in the world of tech. When two people are both fired from a tech start-up at the same time, one a high-powered attorney and the other a young fellow, they decide to work together towards a common goal. At first, it's to defend their own respective cases. But soon, Michael Price (Mike Colter) and Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller) realize there's an undeserved market in this tech hub city: those who have been exploited by powerful corporations.

Cupertino is the perfect David vs. Goliath story with a modern-day backdrop and a likable unlikely pairing. Together, they aim to prove that, with a talented team and a healthy dose of confidence, it is possible to take on companies with deep pockets and endless teams of lawyers. It's a hero story about fighting battles that otherwise seem insurmountable.

'High Potential' (2024–Present)

Image via ABC

Kaitlin Olson is wonderful as Morgan Gillory in High Potential, a single mother with an IQ of 160 who is hired as a consultant by the local police department to help them solve major crimes. Her keen observational skills and knack for seeing things others miss is worth dealing with her frantic, obsessive nature, and inability to follow the rules. The crime comedy drama has developed its story over the last two seasons as Morgan has become someone her partner, detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata), appreciates versus loathes having to work with.

The 10/10 no notes detective series builds tension with an overarching storyline about Morgan's missing ex-husband. That investigation raises the stakes behind the scenes while the team works on other day-to-day cases. The show is brilliant, exploring not only Morgan's skills similarly to other procedurals with protagonists who have special gifts, but also the downside of the way her mind is constantly racing. There are emotional moments as the narrative explores how Morgan balances being a mom with her now demanding job and complicated brain.

Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard

Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.

🐕Wick

🏁Fast

🧨Mission

🎄Die Hard

FIND YOUR FRANCHISE →

01

How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.

REVEAL MY FRANCHISE →

Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

John Wick

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

Fast & Furious

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Mission: Impossible

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Die Hard

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

'Will Trent' (2023–Present)

Image via ABC

Another complicated protagonist, Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) is a special agent with the GBI who has an incredible ability to recreate crime scenes in his head. This is, in some ways, fueled by necessity since he's dyslexic, never traveling without his tape recorder to capture his findings and thoughts. As an orphan who spent his childhood going from one abusive group or foster home to another, he has a lot of trauma to unpack as well.

Will Trent features a dynamic ensemble cast of likable characters, each with their own quirky personalities. But as the latest fourth season confirmed, it's also not afraid to take risks. With the departure of a main character and a new trauma to deal with for another, there are massive stakes for the upcoming fifth season. This will assuredly shift the story in new directions, keeping it fresh, exciting, and somber yet funny at the same time.

'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' (1999–Present)

One of the most enduring procedurals on television ever, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is now airing its 28thseason, with no signs of slowing down. The series has earned the distinction of being the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television. It's darker and drearier than the others, focusing on sexually oriented crimes with disturbing storylines. What makes it even darker is that many of the storylines are inspired by real-life headlines.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit explores the personal lives of its characters as well, including detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), who has broken the record for playing the longest-running character ever on television. The series has become one of those oddly comforting shows, despite how horrifying the crimes are that are being investigated. It's impossible not to get sucked into an episode once you start watching.

'NCIS' (2003–Present)

Image via CBS

Another long-running show, NCIS has 24 seasons under its belt and is still going strong with a prequel series, NCIS: Origins, doing well also. Many forget that NCIS was actually a spin-off of JAG and has since surpassed that show in notoriety and length. As a military police procedural, it differs from others in that the show focuses on special agents working specifically on crimes involving military personnel.

Though Mark Harmon left the series as its main character after Season 19, the show has continued strong with a talented cast of great NCIS franchise characters, including Michael Weatherly, Sean Murray, and joining in Season 14, Wilmer Valderrama. NCIS has garnered a loyal legion of fans who have been watching since the beginning. But it's also the kind of show you can watch from virtually any season, pick up on, and appreciate for its predictability, formulaic comfort, and intriguing storylines.

'Matlock' (2024–Present)

Image via CBS

Paying homage to the original in name only, Matlock is a legal drama with its own unique story. Madeline Kingston (Kathy Bates) is a wealthy, retired lawyer who takes a job as an associate at a law firm, pretending to be a widow in financial distress. The reason is that her daughter was a victim of the opioid crisis, and she thinks this firm has evidence that could have saved her life. Madeline is determined to get to the bottom of it by taking them down from the inside.

The only reason this series, one of the best procedurals that isn't about cops or doctors, is called Matlock is because the original show starring Andy Griffith exists in the fictional world of this show. Since Madeline was a fan of the series, she uses the surname as a fake one to get her foot in the door. It's no surprise that Matlock ranks among the best new procedurals given the brilliance of Bates. Combined with the relevant modern-day storyline, it strikes the right chord. The show has been a massive hit throughout its first two seasons, with a third on the way.

Matlock

• 

  Kathy Bates

  Madeline 'Matty' Matlock

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  Skye P. Marshall

  Olympia Lawrence