The 6 Most Suspenseful Shows Released Since 2010, Ranked

Published Sep 27, 2026, 7:48 AM EDT

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I used to think suspense needed a ticking clock or a killer on the loose to actually work. Turns out the shows that get under my skin the most don't need any of that, they just take their time and trust you to sit in discomfort with them. Every single show on this list is built around someone pretending to be a different person than they actually are, creating a thrilling story for you to sit with.

I've recommended these six shows to people the most, and they are also the ones I've had the hardest time explaining why afterward. Something about them just stays with you longer than it should. A single dinner scene or a quiet conversation in a car does more damage here than an actual chase scene manages in most other thrillers.

6 'The Americans' (2013–2018)

Image via FX

Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) run a normal suburban household with two kids in 1980s Washington D.C., and they're both undercover KGB agents nobody around them has any reason to suspect. Their next-door neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), happens to be the FBI agent actively hunting Soviet spies just like them, and he has no idea he's friends with two of the exact people he's looking for.

Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer himself, created the show, and that real intelligence background shows in how mundane and procedural the actual spy tradecraft looks on screen. Russell and Rhys became a real couple during filming, which adds an odd layer to how convincing their fake marriage looks. The finale is widely considered one of the best series endings ever written, quiet, devastating, and completely deserved.

5 'Hannibal' (2013–2015)

Image via NBC

Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), an FBI profiler with an unusual gift for getting inside a killer's head, starts working with a psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) who's quietly manipulating him the entire time. Bryan Fuller shoots the murders here like fine art installations, blood arranged into deliberate, painterly compositions instead of standard crime-scene gore.

The show works as a prequel to the world of Silence of the Lambs, though it barely resembles a typical crime procedural by the time it finds its own rhythm. NBC canceled it after three seasons despite strong reviews, and fans still argue it never got the ending it actually deserved. The relationship between Will and Hannibal has a charged, intimate quality that fans have spent years dissecting online.

4 'Mr. Robot' (2015–2019)

Image via USA Network

Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cybersecurity engineer with crippling social anxiety, gets recruited by a mysterious anarchist hacker named Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) to help take down the corporation controlling most of the world's debt. Sam Esmail wrote and directed nearly every episode himself, an unusually hands-on approach for a show running multiple seasons.

The hacking scenes are technically accurate that real security researchers have praised the show for getting details other TV shows are always fake. A major twist eventually reveals something about Mr. Robot's actual identity that recontextualizes basically every scene that came before it, without the show ever cheating to get there. Malek's performance holds the whole unreliable narrator structure together, since the audience only ever knows exactly as much as Elliot's own fractured perspective allows.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun

Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner.

🧢Dustin(Stranger Things)

🗼Emily(Emily in Paris)

🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday)

🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game)

FIND YOUR BEST FRIEND →

01

How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it.

AWe got loud about the same obsession and never stopped. BThey invited me somewhere before we had properly met. CWe bonded over disliking exactly the same thing. DThey noticed I was struggling and stayed with me.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours.

AA ridiculous plan neither of us should attempt. BSomewhere new, photographed heavily, ending very late. CSomewhere quiet, few people, zero small talk. DSomething simple, and a conversation that actually matters.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it.

AThey are already putting their shoes on. BThey answer instantly and turn it into a plan. CThey answer and say something unflattering and true. DThey listen for an hour and never check the time.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected.

ASupport first. We can review the mistake later. BA relentlessly positive reframe of the entire disaster. CThe blunt version. Do not soften it for me. DPatience, and no judgment about how I got here.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are.

AI am all in, always, about everything. BI can turn almost any situation into a good time. CI say the thing nobody else in the room will. DI look after whoever is having the worst day.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks.

ALoudly, briefly, then back to normal by Tuesday. BThey apologise first, enthusiastically, with a gift. CCold silence, then one dry joke that fixes everything. DWe talk until we both understand what actually happened.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap.

ATo make my life bigger than it would be alone. BTo push me out of the house and into my own life. CTo catch me when I start lying to myself. DTo be the person who never gave up on me.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get.

AWe would still drop everything for each other, instantly. BWe still make plans, and we still actually go. CWe still cut through each other's nonsense in one sentence. DThey stood by me once when it cost them something.

REVEAL MY BEST FRIEND →

The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…

Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like.

Dustin Henderson

You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan.

• Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind.
• You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it.
• He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds.
• You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.

Emily Cooper

You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves.

• Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels.
• You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else.
• She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts.
• She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo.

Wednesday Addams

You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list.

• Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount.
• You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else.
• Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring.
• Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.

Seong Gi-hun

You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.

• Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself.
• You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving.
• He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage.
• He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

3 'Dark' (2017–2020)

Image via Netflix

Children start disappearing from a small German town called Winden, and what looks like a simple missing-persons case slowly grows into a time loop connecting four generations of the same interconnected families. Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese created the show together, and the family tree gets so complicated that characters eventually turn out to be their own ancestors, cousins, and children all at once.

Fans built entire spreadsheets and diagrams just to keep track of who's related to who across which specific decade. The show jumps between 1888, 1921, 1953, 1986, 2019, and beyond, and every timeline still feels too real despite the sheer mechanical complexity underneath it. It's one of the most intricately plotted shows ever made, full stop, in any language.

2 'Mindhunter' (2017–2019)

Image via Netflix

Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), two real-life inspired FBI agents, start interviewing convicted serial killers to figure out what actually makes them tick, back when criminal profiling barely existed as a field. Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton), one of the killers they interview repeatedly, delivers some of the most quietly disturbing dialogue in the whole show without a single act of on-screen violence.

David Fincher directed and produced most of the episodes, and the interview scenes run long on purpose, letting the dread build through conversations. The show got canceled after two seasons despite strong reviews, and Fincher reportedly said continuing it would've needed a budget nobody was willing to give him.

1 'Fargo' (2014–2024)

Image via FX

Each season of this show tells a mostly standalone story set somewhere in the Upper Midwest, borrowing the tone of the original Coen Brothers film without ever directly adapting its actual plot. Noah Hawley created the show, and the first season alone turns an ordinary insurance salesman into someone capable of real violence, mostly because a chaotic hitman named Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) decides to destabilize his entire life for fun.

That anthology structure means the show can completely reinvent its cast, setting, and time period every season without ever losing its specific blend of dark comedy and sudden brutal violence. New characters and a new ensemble show up each time, but the same sense of ordinary people getting pulled into something much bigger than themselves stays consistent throughout. Ten years and five seasons later, it's still finding new ways to tell essentially the same story about how quickly an ordinary life can spiral out of control.

Fargo