3 great British TV crime shows you need to watch in March 2024

Jason Struss
·3 min read
2
A woman and a man stare at each other in Next of Kin.
BBC/BritBox

March marks the arrival of spring and the signs of rebirth are everywhere. That includes movie theaters, which are now alive again thanks to Dune: Part Two, and streaming services, which have hit shows like Shōgun and Masters of the Air.

In February, Digital Trends recommended three great British crime shows currently streaming. If you’ve already watched them, or just need new recommendations to fill up your queue, then the following three selections should help. One show just premiered in January 2024, another is a political thriller on Netflix, and the other is an under-the-radar 2023 show on BritBox.

Need more recommendations? Check out the best British shows on Netflix and the best British shows on Hulu.

Monsieur Spade (2024)

Monsieur Spade Official Trailer Ft. Clive Owen | Premieres January 14 on AMC+

There are a handful of fictional characters from the 20th century that everybody knows: Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind; Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz; and Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. You can probably add Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s literary detective, to that list. After all, he was made famous by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, the 1941 film noir directed by John Huston.

Spade’s story continues in the new 2024 series Monsieur Spade, which sees an older Spade in blissful retirement in the South of France. After six nuns are found brutally murdered at a nearby convent, Spade is drawn back to what he does best, solving crimes, and takes up his trench coat once again to bring justice to the wronged.

Monsieur Spade is now streaming on AMC+ via Amazon Prime Video.

Next of Kin (2023)

A woman rests on a man in Next of Kin.
BBC/BritBox

You liked her in The Good Wife, now get ready to love Archie Panjabi, this time in a lead role in Next of Kin. Panjabi plays Mona Harcourt, whose tranquil life is suddenly upended in mere moments as she and her husband (Jack Davenport) experience a traumatic terrorist attack in London. To make matters worse, she also discovers her brother, Kareem, has been abducted in Pakistan. Talk about a bad day!

Are the London bombing and Kareem’s abduction somehow related? And what role, if any, does her husband play in all this madness? It wouldn’t be a good crime show without these questions, and Next of Kin delivers on all fronts. Best of all is Panjabi, who continues to prove all the awards she won while she was on The Good Wife weren’t a fluke.

Nest of Kin is streaming on BritBox.

Bodyguard (2018)

A woman and a man get out of a car in Bodyguard.
Netflix

The opening 15 minutes of Bodyguard‘s first episode are arguable the most stressful minutes in modern TV history. I won’t tell you what happens, but I will tell you that it gives you just a taste of what the rest of the show has to offer. Bodyguard follows a paranoid war veteran, David Budd, who is assigned to serve and protect the British home secretary, Julia Montague, who is deeply unpopular and also somewhat attracted to her new protector.

This is no romance, however, as Budd has to constantly defend Julia’s life from would-be threats. The danger may come from within, however, as Budd’s past threatens not only his present, but possibly Julia as well. Thanks to a great pair of lead performances from Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes, Bodyguard puts new life into that hoary cliché “edge-of-your-seat thriller.” Bodyguard is good stuff, and a guaranteed binge watch. 

Bodyguard is streaming on Netflix.