20 best shows like A Prophet (2009)

Just an ordinary boy from the Sofia suburbs becomes the first bulgarian undercover cop. Forced by his father when he was young to lie and cheat, Martin becomes the perfect liar. That skill, and also the hatred of the 'underworld' makes him the perfect match for a dangerous mission - to infiltrate the crime organisation of a rich and powerful businessman. While infiltrating and living in fear of being uncovered, Martin falls in love with the most inappropriate woman - Djaro's girlfriend, Suni. Just when he gains the trust of the mobsters, it appears that the real enemy is in the police. Martin is alone against all, facing difficult decisions.

Inspired by the adventures of Arsène Lupin, gentleman thief Assane Diop sets out to avenge his father for an injustice inflicted by a wealthy family.

Zen is a British television mini series produced by Left Bank Pictures for the BBC, co-produced with WGBH Boston for its Masterpiece anthology series, Mediaset and ZDF. It stars Rufus Sewell and Caterina Murino and is based on the Aurelio Zen detective novels by Michael Dibdin. The series was filmed on location in Italy, but the dialogue is in English. The series, which comprises three 90-minute films, was broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sunday evenings from 2 January 2011 on BBC One. The three films were based on the books Vendetta, Cabal and Ratking.

Set in 1959 Miami, Florida shortly after the Cuban Revolution, Magic City tells the story of Ike Evans, the owner of Miami's most glamorous hotel, the Miramar Playa. Evans is forced to make an ill-fated deal with Miami mob boss Ben Diamond to ensure the success of his glitzy establishment.

Freddie Jackson is released from prison in 1984 having served a four-year sentence for armed robbery. His wife Jackie, who has been waiting for him on the outside in the mistaken belief that that he wants to go straight, soon finds herself disappointed: Freddie is in fact raring to get back into the game and has set his sights on becoming top dog in the East End underworld.

The true story of a decades-long conflict between the Los Angeles Police Department, under the determined leadership of Police Chief William Parker, and ruthless criminal elements led by Mickey Cohen, a one-time boxer who rose to the top of L.A.'s criminal world. The series is a fast-paced crime drama set in Los Angeles during the 1940s and '50s. It's a world of glamorous movie stars, powerful studio heads, returning war heroes, a powerful and corrupt police force and an even more dangerous criminal network determined to make L.A. its West Coast base.

Boardwalk Empire is a period drama focusing on Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (based on the historical Enoch L. Johnson), a political figure who rose to prominence and controlled Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition period of the 1920s and 1930s. Nucky interacts with several historical figures in both his personal and political life, including mobsters, politicians, government agents, and the common folk who look up to him. The federal government also takes an interest in the bootlegging and other illegal activities in the area, sending agents to investigate possible mob connections but also looking at Nucky's lifestyle—expensive and lavish for a county political figure. Primetime Emmy Award-winning screenwriter and producer Terence Winter adapted the show from Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, a book by Nelson Johnson about historical criminal kingpin Enoch L. Johnson.

Paris, France, 1899. The corpse of an unknown woman is found in the river Seine. The investigation will push a young ambitious inspector to discover a heavy state secret.

Loosely based on infamous crime boss Bumpy Johnson, who in the early 1960s returned from ten years in prison to find the neighborhood he once ruled in shambles. With the streets controlled by the Italian mob, Bumpy attempts to regain his piece of Harlem.

Fresh out of prison, world-class thief Daisy ”Jett” Kowalski is forced back into doing what she does best by dangerous and eccentric criminals determined to exploit her skills for their own ends.

The iron-fisted Akhandanand Tripathi is a millionaire carpet exporter and the mafia don of Mirzapur. His son, Munna, is an unworthy, power-hungry heir who will stop at nothing to inherit his father's legacy. An incident at a wedding procession forces him to cross paths with Ramakant Pandit, an upstanding lawyer, and his sons, Guddu and Bablu. It snowballs into a game of ambition, power and greed that threatens the fabric of this lawless city.

The series tells the story of DI Kari Sorjonen of the Serious Crime Unit in Lappeenranta, his family, and his investigations into a variety of harrowing homicides around the border area.

A contemporary and culturally resonant drama about a young programmer, Elliot, who suffers from a debilitating anti-social disorder and decides that he can only connect to people by hacking them. He wields his skills as a weapon to protect the people that he cares about. Elliot will find himself in the intersection between a cybersecurity firm he works for and the underworld organizations that are recruiting him to bring down corporate America.

Before there was Batman, there was GOTHAM. Everyone knows the name Commissioner Gordon. He is one of the crime world's greatest foes, a man whose reputation is synonymous with law and order. But what is known of Gordon's story and his rise from rookie detective to Police Commissioner? What did it take to navigate the multiple layers of corruption that secretly ruled Gotham City, the spawning ground of the world's most iconic villains? And what circumstances created them – the larger-than-life personas who would become Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and The Joker?

The true story of Colombia's infamously violent and powerful drug cartels.

Meet the Donnelly brothers: Tommy, Jimmy, Kevin and Sean. There is nothing these four Irish brothers wouldn't do to protect each other, and for them that means lying, cheating, stealing and, occasionally, calling the cops. Narrated by wannabe gangster Joey "Ice Cream," this gritty series bears witness to the Donnelly brothers' sudden involvement in organized crime, focusing on how they go from boys to mobsters, and showing how their new life affects their relationships with friends, family and lovers.

Soulful thriller set in Tokyo and London, exploring the butterfly effect of a single murder across two cities. A dark, witty and daring examination of morality and redemption.

Los Angeles. 1983. A storm is coming and it's name is crack. Set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it, the story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course.

An action-packed Las Vegas thriller about a former military operative turned security expert who is drawn into a high-stakes game where an organization of wealthy individuals gamble on his ability to stop some of the biggest crimes imaginable from playing out. Can he take them down from the inside and get revenge for the death of his wife, or is it true what they say: the House always wins.

The six-part series opens with a daring diamond heist before quickly delving into the dark heart of Europe where a shadowy alliance of gangsters and 'banksters' now rules. Naomi is the British loss adjustor charged with recovering the stolen diamonds whatever the cost. Also in pursuit is French-Algerian policeman Khalil.

Lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock uses his heightened senses from being blinded as a young boy to fight crime at night on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil.

Explore a gang world we've never seen before: gangs that are made up of the very men and women sworn to uphold the law – cops. Only select officers make the cut, but once inside, gang members will do what they must to protect each other from enemies inside and outside their ranks.

Carmen, the daughter of a notorious Amsterdam drug lord, reluctantly takes charge of the family's smuggling business in order to clear her husband's debts.

Based on the book of the same name by bestselling author Roberto Saviano, ZeroZeroZero is an unforgettable exploration of the inner workings of the global cocaine trade.

Two different young men coming together from different places stand side by side and fight against a conspiracy. They go after a past that doesn't leave behind. They bring to account of old notebooks, dirty cases, big and small lies. They're in a life with the Mafia, money, intrigue. They face against Halka, the terrifying face of which they have yet to know.

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a retired judicial officer decides to commit a murder that he had been planning for years.

A sexy, suspense-driven legal thriller about a group of ambitious law students and their brilliant, mysterious criminal defense professor. They become entangled in a murder plot and will shake the entire university and change the course of their lives.

Vincenzo Cassano is an Italian lawyer and Mafia consigliere who moves back to Korea due to a conflict within his organization. He ends up crossing paths with a sharp-tongued lawyer named Cha-young, and the two join forces in using villainous methods to take down villains who cannot be punished by the law.

In early 90s Boston, an African-American District Attorney comes in from Brooklyn advocating change and forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran invested in maintaining the status quo. Together they take on a family of armored car robbers from Charlestown in a case that grows to encompass and eventually upend Boston’s city-wide criminal justice system.

A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.

The trials and triumphs of one of America’s wealthiest and unhappiest families, the Gettys. Told over multiple seasons and spanning the twentieth century, the series begins in 1973 with the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, an heir to the Getty oil fortune, by the Italian mafia in Rome.

In 2008, a fight over land in a seaside town near Rome spirals into a deadly battle between organized crime, corrupt politicians and the Vatican.

Ambitious Jana is confronted with the unscrupulous machinations of the world of finance. Her working life is determined by egotism, the pressure to succeed and machismo. She soon has to decide how far she is prepared to go for her career.

See the rise of the Guadalajara Cartel as an American DEA agent learns the danger of targeting narcos in 1980s Mexico.

Bea Smith is locked up while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of her husband and must learn how life works in prison. A modern adaptation and sequel of the iconic Prisoner series.

In London, the life of Jean, a troubled crime scene cleaner, is turned upside down when his outlaw brother Martin crash lands into his world, entangling them in the deadly dynamics of organized crime.

Frank Tagliano (Steven Van Zandt), is a former member of the New York mob. After testifying in a trial in the United States, Tagliano is relocated to Lillehammer in Norway through the FBI's witness protection program. Frank Tagliano was intrigued by Lillehammer when he saw television images of the Winter Olympics in 1994, and therefore chooses to start his new life there. The transition from being a feared and respected gangster in New York, to become an unemployed immigrant in Norway, is not simple. Frank discovers that to get up and in the Norwegian rural society, he must resort to the old, ruthless methods. The spelling of the series title alludes to Tagliano's dog Lily, and the way that Frank and some other anglophones pronounce the town's name.

Jeanne Deber, known as "La Mante", the famous serial murderer who terrorized France more than 20 years ago, is forced by the police to come out of isolation to track down her copycat. She agrees to collaborate on one condition: to have only one interlocutor, Damien Carrot, her son, who became a cop because of the crimes of his mother, and who refuses all contact with her since her arrest.

Carlos is a French-German television and cinema biographical film from 2010, about the life of the 1970s international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, from his first series of attacks in 1973 until his arrest in 1994. It premiered as a three-part TV mini-series on French pay channel Canal+, with the three parts airing on 19 May, May 26 and June 2, 2010. On the same day it premiered on Canal+, the full 5½ hour version was also shown out of competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Produced by Daniel Leconte of French production company Film En Stock and Jens Meuer of German production company Egoli Tossell Film, in association with Canal+ and French Arte, it was directed by Olivier Assayas from a screenplay by Leconte, Assayas and Dan Franck, and stars Édgar Ramírez as Carlos. The film exists both as a three-part mini-series and a feature film of various lengths between 338 and 319 minutes, but also in several abridged versions, from 187 minutes down to 166 minutes. Classified as a theatrical film as well as a TV film/TV mini-series, Carlos has been awarded both theatrical awards and TV awards; among them the 2010 Golden Globe award for the 'Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television', the 2010 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director, the National Society of Film Critics 2010 award for Best Director, the New York Film Critics Circle 2010 award for Best Foreign Language Film, the 2010 European Film Award for Best Editor, the 2010 Critics Award for Best Film at the São Paulo International Film Festival, and Édgar Ramírez won the 2010 César Award for Most Promising Actor.

A young ballerina is found hanged on a theatre stage in Reykjavik. The case is closed as suicide but two lawyers and a detective believe dark forces are at play in this challenging Icelandic thriller.

Three girls in high school made a prank on the fourth girl and caused her to be expelled from the high school with her teacher. After 20 years they got together in a high society environment.

The Defenders is a drama about two colorful Las Vegas defense attorneys who go all-in when it comes to representing their clients. Nick and Pete are the local go-to guys with an eclectic client list who are still looking to hit their own jackpot.

After being implicated in a deadly scandal, a trader at a leading London bank fights to clear his name, but instead uncovers an intercontinental conspiracy masterminded by powerful forces operating in the shadows.

Police detective Peter Wendel leads a cold case group. Based on an original idea by Leif GW Persson, one of Sweden’s most recognized criminologists.

As a young associate, Mitchell McDeere brought down the prestigious Memphis law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke, which operated as a front for the Chicago mob—and his life was never the same. After a difficult decade, which included a stay in the Federal Witness Protection program, Mitch and his family now emerge from isolation to reclaim their lives and their future—only to find that past dangers are still lurking and new threats are everywhere.

A prisoner becomes a lawyer, litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.

Emma Banville, a human rights lawyer known for defending lost causes, sets out to prove the innocence of Kevin Russell, who was convicted for the murder of a school girl 14 years earlier.

Honest cop Tony Jr. gets advice from his unscrupulous father, retired NYPD officer Tony Sr., about everything from his job to his love life.

Murders in... is a collection of French-Belgian police TV movies taking place each time in a different French city and region.

The story of Charles Ingram, a former British army major who caused a major scandal in the early 2000s after being caught cheating his way to winning £1 million on the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Ingram, his wife Diana and an accomplice, Tecwen Whittock, who was sitting in the audience, initially pulled off the on-screen heist before being caught and standing trial.