From Reacher to Sons of Anarchy, some of the best thriller shows on TV favor exhilarating action over a complex and confusing plot. It’s common for thriller shows to spin a complicated narrative web that’s difficult to follow, like Severance or Slow Horses.
But sometimes, you just want to switch your brain off and watch Jack Bauer beat up terrorists, or watch the undercover cops of Miami Vice chase after a perp in a lavish sports car. These thriller shows are more interested in action than plot.
10
Prison Break
A Meticulously Planned Jailbreak
The first episode of Prison Break sets up the premise of a man getting himself intentionally incarcerated in a maximum-security prison so he can help his wrongfully convicted brother escape. But that’s just the beginning. They soon run afoul of a shady corporate alliance known as “The Company,” which wants to hunt them down to tie up loose ends.
The plot of Prison Break is simple enough: Michael Scofield has tattooed the prison blueprints onto his body, so he and his brother Lincoln can plan their jailbreak. The series’ key plot points — breaking out of prison, going on the run as fugitives, and taking on The Company — are all driven by action spectacle.
9
Magnum, P.I.
Tom Selleck As A Chilled-Out Private Eye
Magnum, P.I. is a delightful two-hander about the relationship between Thomas Magnum, a laidback private detective living in a luxurious mansion, and his uptight butler Higgins. The dynamic between Magnum and his comic foil takes center stage in Magnum, P.I., so the plot never gets too heavy.
Action became a popular TV genre throughout the 1980s, and Magnum, P.I. is one of the definitive action shows of that era. The action became so prominent that, a few episodes into the series, its theme tune was replaced with something more fast-paced and exciting to reflect that focus.
8
Sons Of Anarchy
An Ultraviolent Biker Drama
What if the Sopranos were bikers instead of mobsters? That’s the premise of Sons of Anarchy. It shares The Sopranos’ mix of crime drama and family drama, but the characters are in a leather-clad biker gang, not an Italian-American mafia family. It’s also much more action-packed than The Sopranos, with plenty of shootouts, motorcycle chases, and prison beatings.
The overarching plot of Sons of Anarchy is a modern reimagining of Hamlet in which a duplicitous stepdad usurps the king. The series has plenty of storylines pitting SAMCRO against law enforcement and other bikers, but those story beats are usually there to set up action sequences. The action is brutal, bloody, and unapologetically gnarly.
7
The Punisher
A Gruesome Vigilante Thriller
Frank Castle is not your average Marvel superhero. He’s essentially a Marvel version of Charles Bronson in Death Wish: a family man who becomes a vicious vigilante when he’s pushed to the edge by some sadistic gangsters. The Punisher premiered on Netflix, outside the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it was free to be as bloody as it wanted.
Jon Bernthal gives one of the best performances of his career in the title role. He captures Frank’s tough-as-nails badassness, but he also captures the deep well of grief and pain that his violence stems from. Every plotline in The Punisher is just there to set up a blood-drenched beatdown whereby Frank serves his uniquely gruesome brand of justice.
6
Miami Vice
The Quintessential ’80s Cop Show
If the ‘80s could be distilled into a single TV show, it would be Miami Vice. Miami Vice subverted the usual tropes of the police procedural by putting its cops in flashy sports cars, playing pop and rock music on the soundtrack, and stylizing the visuals. It revolves around a pair of undercover cops getting into all kinds of trouble.
Color TV had been around for decades by the time Miami Vice came along, but it was the first show to make full use of that color. A big part of that was putting as much action as the budget would allow into each episode.
5
Justified
Elmore Leonard-Based Neo-Western
Adapted from Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole,” Justified is a thrilling neo-western about a roguish U.S. Marshal hunting down fugitives on the modern-day frontier. The series started off as a case-of-the-week procedural in which Raylan Givens went after a different perp in each episode, but it evolved into a more serialized drama.
Two things persisted throughout the show’s run: the rich, stylish, conversational dialogue ripped straight from the pages of Leonard’s stories, and the frequency of the action set-pieces. In the tradition of Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake, Raylan doesn’t win a ton of fights; he takes a lot of punches, which makes him a lovable underdog.
4
24
A Real-Time Terrorist Thriller
What sets 24 apart from other thriller shows is that it plays out in real time. Every season is 24 episodes long, and every episode makes up an hour in a very eventful day in the life of counterterrorist agent Jack Bauer. On each of these days, Jack puts his life on the line to neutralize a terrorist threat against America.
Every season has a complicated plot with an abundance of twists as large-scale operations unfold and the villains improvise to keep up with Jack’s meddling. But above all, it’s an action series; the plot is just there to facilitate action sequences. Jack spends each of his 24-hour adventures getting in and out of high-stakes, life-or-death scenarios.
3
The A-Team
Soldiers Of Fortune In A Gig Economy
When a quartet of ex-Army Special Forces badasses are framed for a crime they didn’t commit, they go on the run and become soldiers of fortune in The A-Team. The A-Team became a pop-cultural staple of the 1980s, beloved for its wacky characters, its lighthearted comedic tone, and above all, its absurd, over-the-top action sequences.
In every episode, the team is hired for a different mercenary job, and every job turns into a high-octane spectacle with explosions, firefights, and car chases. The A-Team was known for sanitizing its violence. There’s plenty of violent action in every episode, but no one ever gets seriously hurt — it’s more like a cartoon, like Tom and Jerry.
2
Reacher
Batman Without A Mask
The title character in Reacher is basically Batman without a mask. He’s a former military cop and current drifter who doles out vigilante justice every time he comes across a nefarious criminal (which is unusually common). Unlike the previous movie adaptations, which retrofitted the source material into a Tom Cruise blockbuster vehicle, Reacher is a spot-on adaptation of Lee Child’s literary icon.
Alan Ritchson instantly proved himself to be a formidable action hero in the role of Reacher. He puts his brawn to good use whenever he encounters a bad guy, and it’s as wildly entertaining as it is uncompromisingly brutal. Each season borrows the plot of one of Child’s novels, but the show’s producers are much more focused on action.
1
Daredevil
A Dark, Grounded, Gritty Superhero Show
After the disappointment of Ben Affleck’s Daredevil movie, the bar was low for the next on-screen adaptation of the Man Without Fear. But the Netflix series went above and beyond that bar with one of the best superhero shows of all time. Its combination of gritty, grounded crime drama and comic book action spectacle is on par with The Dark Knight.
There’s a great hero/villain dynamic at the heart of Daredevil — Charlie Cox’s righteous lawyer Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio’s ruthless mob boss Wilson Fisk — but it’s much more interested in action than plotting. There’s one iconic Oldboy-style hallway fight in particular that established the show’s incredibly cinematic style of action filmmaking early on, and the rest of the series maintained it.
