With the dark and gritty crime drama, Under the Bridge, you may have a thirst for more. These are our favorite TV thrillers to watch after Under the Bridge.
If you want to stream some gritty crime dramas after Under the Bridge, here are the best of the best and where to watch them.
There’s no shortage of true crime series, but Hulu’s Under the Bridge is a special breed. It follows journalist and writer Rebecca Godfrey, portrayed by Riley Keough, as she uncovers the secrets of the girls living in Victoria, British Columbia. But this entwines her with an investigation into the missing person case, and later homicide, of 14-year-old Reena Virk.
As she reunites with her old flame, a cop dedicated to the case because of her own past (Oscar-nominated Lily Gladstone), their perspectives of what really happened and who to trust overlap and drift apart. Everyone has motive and no one is innocent. And now that the series is ending, we need something else to fill the Under the Bridge-sized hole in our hearts.
And if you haven’t yet finished watching Under the Bridge, catch the whole season on Hulu.
Just one season long, Apple TV+’s Shining Girls stars Elisabeth Moss as a journalist who was attacked and left for dead, not unlike Reena Virk. The difference, however, is that Moss’s Kirby survived to search for her attacker. She and reporter Dan Velazquez (Wagner Moura) team up to catch an elusive serial killer who may have been her assailant. While Shining Girls isn’t based on a true story, it elicits similar aspects to Under the Bridge with its journalistic and female perspective of finding an unknown killer. Watch Shining Girls on Apple TV+.
Killer Kids was a little-known Canadian documentary series that followed the stories of murderous kids and teens. Because Under the Bridge wasn’t just about Reena’s murder, but also her teenage killers, a series that follows and tries to understand kids with murderous instincts is an apt next step. Every episode in the four season show tackles a different case with young actors stepping in to reenact some of the tragic events.
What happens when an average person helps solve a murder? Both Michelle McNamara and Under the Bridge’s Rebecca Godfrey have something in common. They’re writers with a journalistic lean who are just absolutely engulfed in the details of the case at hand. Of course, Michelle’s real-life research, which ultimately helped uncover the identity of the Golden State Killer, was compiled over the course of decades. Michelle’s celebrity husband, Patton Oswalt, helped produce the documentary to bring her story to a wider audience after her untimely death. Watch I’ll Be Gone in the Dark on Max.
While The Sinner might just seem like another police procedural, its premiere season evokes some of what made Under the Bridge so fascinating. Each season of Derek Simonds’ USA Network show follows police as they try to understand the motives of killers. In the first season, Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) delves into the past of Cora Tannetti (an Emmy-nominated performance from Jessica Biel) who stabbed a man to death. The female killer is rare in television and movies, so the show’s first season is a definite draw for Under the Bridge fans. Watch The Sinner on Netflix.
Netflix’s Unbelievable follows two female detectives as they chase a serial rapist, so it gives us a little hint of the relationship between Cam and Rebecca. But at Unbelievable’s center is a teenager, portrayed by Kaitlyn Dever, charged with lying about sexual assault. The true story helps us understand why women are often afraid to come forward with assault charges while managing to capture the dark joys of being a teenage girl. Watch Unbelievable on Netflix.
It may seem like an odd choice to throw a teen comedy in the mix, but Netflix’s Never Have I Ever gets at the heart of what led Under the Bridge’s Reena to leave her family in the first place. Teenage girls of color often face even more bullying than their peers. Although Devi handles her bullies with a chip on her shoulder and a smirk on her face, the cultural differences that separate her from her peers evoke a bit of what Reena may have been going through, but in a much happier light. Watch Never Have I Ever on Netflix.
Of course, if what you loved about Under the Bridge was the dynamic between the young girls of Seven Oaks and their friends, then the closest thing to watch would be Mean Girl Murders. The docuseries is now in its second season on Investigation Discovery with each episode following the story of a different teenage girl situation that ended in murder. Most of us will be able to relate to the bullying and cliques, but when the girls take these actions to new heights, it proves to be fatal. Watch Mean Girl Murders on Max.
