Dramas like
Beyond Evil

The obvious pairing, and the correct one. A prosecutor who feels nothing and a detective who feels everything, a case that keeps widening into the institution around it, and a script so tight that no scene is decoration. Same faith in silence and in the viewer's attention. Difference: it never asks you to doubt its own leads, so you lose the specific queasiness of not knowing whose side you are on.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the first autopsy contradicts the official story.

For the second half rather than the first. Criminal profilers doing quiet, unglamorous work, a script interested in what proximity to violence does to the people who study it, and a lead performance built almost entirely out of listening. It answers the question Beyond Evil circles: what is a monster, and who gets to decide. Difference: episodic and undramatic by design. No town, no partnership, no cliffhangers.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the first interview subject starts talking and the method becomes visible.

Watch this one next, or first if you have not. Cold cases worked across time, a partnership built on trust that keeps getting tested, and consequences that arrive out of order and hurt. Difference: it has a fantasy device and a much faster pulse. Where Beyond Evil sits in a room for ten minutes, this cuts.

Hooks early Episode 1. The walkie-talkie premise is set up and paid off inside the first hour.

The standard pairing in both directions, with one caveat: if Mouse is your favourite of the two then Beyond Evil plays slow, and if Beyond Evil is then Mouse plays over the top. Same central question about whether evil is born. Difference: it is a plot machine with a mid-series identity change, willing to be lurid where Beyond Evil is restrained.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the killer and the two men chasing him are locked into the same story.

For the sustained not-knowing. A man with a false name, someone who loves him closing in, and the same interest in what maintaining a lie costs the liar. Difference: it is a marriage story underneath, so it is warmer and more conventional, and it plays as melodrama where Beyond Evil plays as reckoning.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the wife starts investigating her own husband. Episode 1 opens with a scene that is hard to sit through.

For the provincial precinct texture. A modern detective stuck among police who do things the old way, older crimes that were never properly worked, and a growing suspicion that the institution was the problem all along. Difference: there is a fantasy premise and a comic streak, so it is a warmer watch than eight hours of two men accusing each other.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the 1988 precinct stops being a joke to him and starts being a place.