20 best shows like Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

The stranger-than-fiction account of a prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015, which spawned a massive manhunt for two convicted murderers who were aided in their escape by a married female prison employee with whom they both became sexually entangled.

8 August 1963: Britain wakes up to news of the biggest robbery in the country’s history. A train has been hijacked and robbed, 35 miles from its arrival in central London. The country is stunned. Who could be behind it? How did they pull off such an audacious raid?

The remarkable story of how murderer Charles Sobhraj was captured. As the chief suspect in unsolved murders of young Western travellers across India, Thailand and Nepal’s ‘Hippie Trail’ in 1975 and 1976, Sobhraj had repeatedly slipped from the grasp of authorities worldwide to become Interpol's most wanted man, with arrest warrants on three different continents.

Based on the true story of Grace Marks, a housemaid and immigrant from Ireland who was imprisoned in 1843, perhaps wrongly, for the murder of her employer Thomas Kinnear. Grace claims to have no memory of the murder yet the facts are irrefutable. A decade after, Dr. Simon Jordan tries to help Grace recall her past.

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.

In the late 1960s, a Los Angeles police sergeant with a complicated personal life starts tracking a small-time criminal and budding cult leader seeking out vulnerable women to join his “cause.” The name of that man is Charles Manson.

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.

Factual drama based on the notorious White House Farm murders, and the ensuing police investigation and court case.

An intense and fictionalized account of actual events and people surrounding Lizzie’s life after her controversial acquittal of the horrific double murder of her father and stepmother in 1892.

Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal is a 2012 Colombian television series produced and broadcast on Caracol TV, about the life of Pablo Escobar. It is only available in Spanish. There is a version available with English subtitles.

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.

Ex-cop and recovering alcoholic Hank Dolworth partners with his best friend, former criminal Britt Pollack, in an unlicensed private investigation business. The series is set in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California, although it is portrayed as a distinct town, with Dolworth having once been a member of the fictional Ocean Beach Police Department.

Follow Jim Fitzgerald, the FBI agent who tracked down Ted Kaczynksi, aka the “Unabomber,” and brought him to justice through his expertise in profiling and linguistics.

An American anthology police detective series utilizing multiple timelines in which investigations seem to unearth personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within or outside the law.

This gritty dramatization of the life of Carlos Tevez shows his rise to soccer stardom amid the harrowing conditions in Argentina's Fuerte Apache.

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.

The Huntress is an American TV series that appeared on the USA Network over subsequent summers of the 2000 and 2001 television seasons. It was inspired by a book about the real bounty hunter, Dottie Thorson, and is also a belated sequel to the 1980 Steve McQueen film, The Hunter.

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.

The daily lives of prisoners in Emerald City, an experimental unit of the Oswald Maximum Security Prison where ingroups - Muslims, Latinos, Italians, Aryans - stick close to their mutual friends and terrorizes their mutual enemies.

A seasonal anthology series that tells startling, stranger-than-fiction true crime stories with the first season following Gypsy Blanchard, a girl trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother.

Walking Tall is an American television drama series that ran on NBC in 1981 for one season of seven episodes. The first 5 episodes aired Saturday nights at 9:00 p.m.. The last 2 episodes aired Tuesday nights at 10:00 p.m. NBC reran all 7 episodes from April-August 1981. This one-hour show was based on the 1973 film Walking Tall, which was based on the life of Buford Pusser. Here, Pusser is the sheriff of McNeal County, Tennessee, fighting criminals each week in 1969.

Twenty years after a devastating terrorist attack in 1983 that halted the course of Poland's liberation and the subsequent downfall of the Soviet Union, an idealistic law student Kajetan and a disgraced police investigator Anatol stumble upon a conspiracy that has kept the Iron Curtain standing and Poland living under a repressive police state.

During a routine search of an old cabin in the remote and wintery back country, Finnish policewoman, Nina Kautsalo, discovers two dead prostitutes, with a third still fighting for her life. The ensuing investigation takes a surprise twist when an extremely rare and deadly virus is discovered in the surviving woman’s bloodwork. When the Finnish Bureau of Investigation takes over the case, German virologist, Thomas Lorenz is called in to assist in identifying and containing the virus. Set within the endless white expanse of the arctic circle, Nina and Thomas must rely on each other to have any hope of saving the ones they love. But what takes precedence? A deadly virus or an active serial killer?

The plot follows detectives Karl Roebuck and Elise Wasserman working together to find a serial killer who left the upper-half body of a French politician and the lower-half of a British prostitute in the Channel Tunnel, at the midpoint between France and the UK. They later learn that the killer—who comes to be nicknamed the "Truth Terrorist"—is on a moral crusade to highlight many social problems, terrorising both countries in the process

The son of a notorious serial killer becomes an acclaimed criminal psychologist who uses his unique insight into how killers think to help the NYPD.

Cameron Black is the world's greatest illusionist. At least, that's what people used to call him - before his greatest secret was exposed and his career destroyed. Even worse, Cameron has good reason to believe this was no accident.

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.

It takes place in the Galicia (Spain) of the 80s, when the fishing sector was transformed and many of the shipowners became indebted. This situation will be favorable for the start of activities such as contraband and drug trafficking.

The terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a flourishing Dallas neurosurgeon whose patients suddenly begin becoming permanently maimed or dead. As victims piled up, two fellow physicians set out to stop him.

What does it take to be a detective in one of America's toughest cities? Follow one homicide unit as Detroit's finest unearth the crisis and revelation, heartbreak and heroism of these inner city cops in Detroit, Michigan.

James is 17 and is pretty sure he is a psychopath. Alyssa, also 17, is the cool and moody new girl at school. The pair make a connection and she persuades him to embark on a darkly comedic road trip in search of her real father.

A tech innovator creates a cutting-edge crowd-sourcing hub to solve his own daughter's murder, as well as revolutionizing crime solving in San Francisco.

The story of one of the most infamous cases in UK criminal history, that of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Told through the prism of three men, the series explores the personal and professional consequences of coming into contact with a man like Nilsen.

Fun-loving San Francisco Police Department investigator Nash Bridges is part of the elite Special Investigations Unit. He tackles crime using his keen sense of humor and charm. Joe Dominguez comes out of retirement to become Bridges' wisecracking yet more rule-abiding partner.

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.

Police duo Bishop and Pike are two best mates bonded by the same moral code, despite their differences. Packed full of humour, action and emotion, Bulletproof is about friendship, conspiracies and ghosts from the past.

The true story of London Metropolitan police detective Colin Sutton's manhunt for serial killer Levi Bellfield.

The harrowing true story of the 1993 standoff between the FBI, ATF and the Branch Davidians, a spiritual sect led by David Koresh in Waco, TX that resulted in a deadly shootout and fire.

A dark and compelling thriller centering on Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Bancroft, a female detective with an explosive secret.

An anthology series that delves into the players, the crime and the media circus, detailing the day-to-day battles of the trial and unveiling the shocking truth of what really went down when the cameras stopped rolling.

Chasing Shadows' follows a team of special operatives who are tracking down serial killers.

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.

Hell-bent on exacting revenge and proving he was framed for his sister's murder, Álex sets out to unearth much more than the crime's real culprit.

Set in the aftermath of Jax Teller’s death, Ezekiel "EZ" Reyes is fresh out of prison and a prospect in the Mayans M.C. charter on the Cali/Mexi border. Now, EZ must carve out his new identity in a town where he was once the golden boy with the American Dream in his grasp.

It's the late 1960s, homosexuality has only just been legalised and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide.

During the thrilling social change of the mid-1950s, four remarkable women who previously served secretly during WWII as code-breakers, turn their skills to solving murders overlooked by police. In the process they are plunged into fascinating corners of the city, forge powerful relationships, and rediscover their own powers and potential.

Follow a disillusioned teen recruited into a storied high school for assassins. Maintaining his moral code while surviving a ruthless curriculum, vicious social cliques, and his own adolescent uncertainties may prove fatal.

A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.

Park Jung-Woo is a prosecutor at Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office. One day, he wakes up and finds himself in locked up at the police station. He has temporary amnesia. Park Jung-Woo is falsely accused and is sentenced to death. He must struggle to prove his innocence.

The Killing is an American crime drama television series based upon the Danish television series Forbrydelsen. Set in Seattle, Washington, the series follows the various murder investigations by homicide detectives Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder.