5 HBO Mystery Shows With No Bad Seasons, Ranked

Published Nov 5, 2026, 7:39 PM EST

Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories. 

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HBO is home to a number of the greatest TV dramas of all time, from The Sopranos, to The Wire, to Succession. HBO's drama series stand out for their unique premises that draw viewers in immediately, as well as strong and compellingly flawed characters that have captivating arcs over the course of their shows. From workplace dramas, to crime dramas, to fantasy and sci-fi series, HBO's drama series are all different from each other, yet they're each gripping and emotionally resonant.

Amongst its phenomenal drama shows, HBO boasts a number of excellent mystery series. While many of these are miniseries, a select handful of HBO's mystery series have multiple seasons that are each truly fantastic. These shows set up compelling mysteries early on and slowly expand on them throughout the course of each season, ultimately delivering a phenomenal payoff in every season finale. These shows also have a solid balance between their central mysteries and their focus on their characters and their core dynamics. These are HBO mystery shows with no bad seasons, ranked.

5 'True Detective' (2014–Present)

Image via HBO

Each season of HBO's hit crime anthology series, True Detective, is vastly different. All of its seasons see its main detectives grappling with their own painful pasts while trying to catch a mysterious killer. The murder or series of murders at the center of the season is always particularly horrifying, and has a unique twist to it. This framework stays the same with each season, but they all have their own separate cast of characters, and they're each set in a different part of the United States.

True Detective now has four seasons under its belt, and its fifth is set to be released next year. True Detective had a very strong start with its gritty and captivating Southern Gothic-style first season, but each of the seasons that has followed continues to tell a compelling and shocking main story. Every season of True Detective tackles its own separate themes related to its specific setting, keeping the series feeling fresh while still keeping consistent with its core structure.

4 'The White Lotus' (2021–Present)

Image via HBO

With three seasons under its belt and another already confirmed to be on the way, The White Lotus is one of HBO's best currently ongoing series. Each season of the anthology-style drama series follows a group of guests during their stay at a White Lotus hotel, a fictionalized luxury hotel chain. At the start of each season, a flash-forward reveals that at least one person was killed during this stay. The show then jumps back in time to the very start of the visit, following an ensemble cast of guests and staff. Each season takes place at a White Lotus in a different location, following a completely new group of people, with occasional minimal overlap between seasons.

The White Lotus is primarily a slowburn dark comedy, setting up compelling dynamics full of tension that builds up throughout the course of the season. All the conflict is character-driven, and these tense and occasionally hostile interactions build a sense of dread in viewers before ultimately boiling over at the end of the season. The show uses its murder mystery framing to set up the stakes at the start of each season, so that viewers know that at least one of these characters will ultimately lose their lives as a result of these conflicts that would otherwise seem low-stakes at the beginning. Every season of The White Lotus honors this framing and embraces the show's unique tone while also standing out on their own due to a new setting and cast of characters, and they're all fantastic.

3 'True Blood' (2008–2014)

Image via HBO

Based on Charlaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries series, True Blood is a dark fantasy series set in a version of the modern real world where the existence of vampires is widely known. Due to the invention of a synthetic blood called Tru Blood, vampires can finally come out of hiding and exist as a part of society — in theory. In reality, vampires are still being ostracized by most humans, who want nothing to do with them. At worst, there are humans who actively want vampires dead, as well as some who are interested in acquiring their blood, which is a highly addictive drug to humans. Some vampires just want to blend in and be treated like anyone else, while others still want to kill and drink human blood like usual.

The series is set in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and it follows a human waitress named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who can read the minds of everyone around her. Because of this, Sookie has never really fit in, and she empathizes with the vampires. The series kicks off when Sookie meets and quickly falls in love with a 173-year-old vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), despite the judgment that they both receive from nearly everyone around them. Each season of True Blood also has a compelling central mystery around which the season is framed. In the first season, someone is murdering local women who have been associated with vampires, which puts Sookie at risk as well. True Blood is a captivating and riveting series all the way through the course of its seven seasons, and its mysteries keep viewers guessing until the very end of each season.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Tyrell

Your drink, your weapon, your seat at the table, what you do to somebody who wrongs you. Eight quick calls and we will tell you whose banner you should actually be standing under. Four houses are still in this: the cold one, the rich one, the one with the dragons, and the one that has never needed a sword to get its way.

🐺Stark(Game of Thrones)

🦁Lannister(Game of Thrones)

🐉Targaryen(House of the Dragon)

🌹Tyrell(Game of Thrones)

CLAIM YOUR HOUSE →

01

What is your go-to at the feast? Everybody has one, and everybody's says something.

ADark ale by the fire, nothing fancy. BWhatever costs the most in the cellar. CWhatever gets poured, drunk far too fast. DOne cup, slowly, while I watch the room.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Pick a weapon off the wall. You get one. Choose quickly.

AA greatsword, heavy and honest. BA dagger, plus a second one nobody knows about. CFire, obviously. DNothing sharper than the things I can say.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

Where do you end up sitting? The seating plan is the politics.

AHigh table, quietly wishing I was outside. BNext to whoever actually matters. CWherever I like, because people move. DA corner seat with a view of everyone.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What do people get wrong about you? Reputation arrives about a week before you do.

AThat I am cold, when I am only quiet. BThat I say what I mean the first time. CThat I might be bluffing. DThat I am harmless.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

One free evening in King's Landing. Where do you go? Nobody plots every single night.

AOut of the city entirely, heading home. BSomewhere expensive, with people who owe me. CWherever it is loud and slightly dangerous. DA long dinner where everybody talks too much.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

Somebody wrongs you. What happens next? This is the real personality test in Westeros.

AI say it to their face, once. BI wait, because they will need me eventually. CEverybody hears about it before morning. DThey never find out it was me.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Your people are in trouble. What is your first move? No time to think about this one.

AI turn up, even when it is a terrible idea. BI pay for the problem to go away. CI go after whoever caused it. DI already called in that favour last week.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

Be honest. What do you actually want? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your house.

ATo go home, and then to stay there. BTo own the room without sitting at the head of it. CThe crown, with everybody watching. DTo be the one everybody genuinely likes.

REVEAL MY HOUSE →

The Banner Is Raised Your House Is…

Four houses, four completely different theories about how you survive a world like this one. Here is where your banner belongs, what the name would cost you, and what it would buy.

House Stark

You belong in the North, where the weather does most of the arguing and nobody is impressed by a title. The Starks are the only great house on this list who genuinely believe that being right matters more than winning, which is exactly why the show spent eight years punishing them for it.

• Your loyalty runs to people rather than to crowns, and you would rather lose a war honestly than win one by doing something you would have to hide.
• The Stark tragedy is a simple one, since a family raised to keep its word ended up surrounded by people who treat a promise as an opening bid.
• You are the one who thinks about the winter while everybody else is still enjoying the summer, and the realm never thanks anybody for that.
• What saves the Starks in the end is not swords. It is the fact that the children grew up and became four completely different kinds of dangerous.

House Lannister

You belong to the house that worked out early on that gold moves faster than armies. Casterly Rock runs on leverage, reputation and the certainty that everybody at the table owes you something, and you are perfectly comfortable with all three.

• You play a longer game than the people around you, and you would rather own the outcome quietly than be seen winning in public.
• Family is the thing you would burn the realm for, which is both the best and the very worst quality this house has.
• Tyrion, Jaime and Cersei are three of the most compelling characters on television precisely because they were raised with everything except the ability to be simple about it.
• You are not the villain of your own story. You are simply the one who read the rules properly and decided to use them.

House Targaryen

You belong to the house that conquered a continent and never quite got over it. Targaryens do not ask for a seat at the table, because in their version of events the table was theirs to begin with, and that certainty is either magnificent or catastrophic depending on the week.

• You feel things at full volume, and nobody who has ever met a Targaryen has described one as measured.
• House of the Dragon made the family far more interesting than the original show could, because here the enemy is not some other house. It is the rest of the bloodline.
• Season 3 landed on HBO in June 2026 and pushed the civil war into the part everybody who read the book has been dreading for years.
• Your great strength and your great problem are the same thing, which is that you genuinely believe the story was always going to end with you.

House Tyrell

You belong to Highgarden, where nobody raises their voice and everybody gets exactly what they came for. The Tyrells feed the realm, charm the realm and quietly steer the realm, and they have never once needed to win a battle to get their way.

• You understand that being liked is a weapon, and you are genuinely better at it than the people who spend their lives trying to be feared.
• Olenna is the most quietly ruthless character in the entire series, and she does all of it from a chair with a bowl of fruit in front of her.
• Your house wins by being useful, since a kingdom that cannot eat without you will forgive you almost anything.
• The risk of being a Tyrell is simple enough. Charm works beautifully on everybody except the one person who has stopped caring what anyone thinks.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

2 'Big Little Lies' (2017–Present)

Based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies follows a group of women living in Monterey, California who are all mothers to first-graders at the same elementary school: Madeline Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley), Bonnie Carlson (Zoë Kravitz), and Renata Klein (Laura Dern). A flash-forward at the start of the series reveals that someone was murdered at a fundraising event for the elementary school. The series then goes back to earlier in the school year, starting on Orientation Day, where Madeline and Celeste become friends with Jane, who's new in town.

At the same time, a violent incident occurs in the first-grade class on Orientation Day, and it's unclear which child perpetrated the act. As tensions rise amongst the mothers, they all deal with the issues occurring in their own lives, both public and private. All the while, the events of the present day are framed by a narration from the night of the fundraiser, as other parents attending that night give their own perspectives on these five women and their families. The second season is a big switch-up, moving away from the central murder mystery to deal with the falling out of that night. Both seasons of Big Little Lies are absolutely fantastic, and it will be exciting to see what direction the drama series takes when it returns for Season 3.

1 'The Leftovers' (2014–2017)

Image via HBO

Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers is a deeply captivating mystery box show set three years after a mysterious event where 2% of the world's population suddenly disappeared without a trace. In the wake of this tragedy, the entire world struggles to move forward from this massive loss despite not having any answers as to what happened. The series centers on Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), who, at the start of the show, is the police chief of the small town of Mapleton, New York.

Every season of The Leftovers is wildly different but equally fantastic. They all follow a group of core characters, while also adding in new characters and leaving others behind with each new season. Season 2 jumps forward in time to the days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Departure, and it is set in Jarden, Texas, the only place that wasn't affected by it. Season 3 is set primarily in Australia, just before the seventh anniversary of the Departure. Over the course of its three seasons, The Leftovers sets up a number of mysteries that all connect back to the Departure, brilliantly choosing when to answer these questions and when not to.

The Leftovers