Some people consider Lost to be the pinnacle of mystery box storytelling, but I can rattle off at least six mystery TV shows that have the ABC series beat. There have been few shows like Lost since it premiered in 2004, and even before it premiered, not many shows gripped the cultural conversation quite like it.
Despite its impressive start, Lost eventually lost some steam. There were just too many unsolved mysteries in Lost by the end of the six seasons. Questions kept piling up while answers became more and more rare. While I’ll always have a soft spot for Lost, plenty of other mystery box shows do it better.
The Returned (2012-2015)
Les Revenants in the original French, The Returned is a supernatural mystery drama series that premiered in 2012 and ran for two seasons. The TV show is set in a small French mountain town where dead people suddenly reappear as if nothing had ever happened to them. Young and old alike return.
As the once dead people try to resume their lives, strange phenomena begin occurring. There are power outages; the local reservoir begins to drain, revealing a church steeple and more; and the appearance of strange marks on the bodies of those in the village, both the living and the dead.
If you ever feel that the zombie genre has grown stale, check out Les Revenants, though avoid the English remake. There are new questions to be answered every episode, but Les Revenants makes sure it doesn’t overload you. It’s weird, scary, and deliberate, winding you into its story with ease.
12 Monkeys (2015-2018)
12 Monkeys is loosely based on the 1995 movie of the same name, which was itself based on Chris Marker’s 1962 featurette, La Jetée. The series is set in the year 2043, where James Cole (Aaron Stanford) is a scavenger who is recruited by “Project Splinter”, a team of scientists led by Katarina Jones (Barbara Sukowa).
A featurette is a kind of movie that is shorter than a full-length film but longer than a short film.
In Cole’s timeline, a megavirus has killed nearly every human on Earth, and will soon mutate to kill the rest. Project Splinter travels back in time to 2015 to stop the release of the virus by the mysterious “Army of the 12 Monkeys”. A recording made in 2015 mentioned Cole, tying him to the fate of humanity.
Time travel problems aside, 12 Monkeys is a fantastic sci-fi mystery that only gets better as the series goes on. The show wisely ignores any time travel logic inconsistencies to focus on the philosophy of free will vs. predestination, posing intriguing questions and puzzles that are eventually, and satisfyingly, answered.
True Detective Season 3 (2019)
To be clear, True Detective season 3 is not the best season of True Detective; however, it is the season with the most mystery elements at play, and it’s a very underrated season of TV to boot. While True Detective seasons 2 and 4 have their problems, season 3’s biggest issue is that it’s not as good as season 1.
True Detective season 3 has mysteries that extend backwards and forwards through time. Some have to do with the case from 1980: the disappearance of a young girl and the gruesome death of her young brother, which remains unsolved three decades after Detectives Wayne (Mahershala Ali) and Roland (Stephen Dorff) first took it on.
The other mystery comes from Wayne in the present. In 2015, Wayne is an elderly man with dementia who has memory loss and hallucinations. The audience learns new information about the case just as Wayne does. It’s a thrilling and gripping season of TV with every mystery building upon itself.
Dark (2017-2020)
There aren’t many sci-fi mystery shows as tightly written as Netflix’s Dark. This German-language series is a must-watch for anyone who enjoys horror, time-travel mysteries, foreign language shows, and just plain good TV. Don’t let the unusual aspects of Dark turn you off; it is unbelievably absorbing TV.
The three-season series is set in the fictional town of Winden, Germany, where multiple children suddenly disappear. This sudden tragedy brings together four estranged families who uncover a sinister time-travel conspiracy spanning decades. Willingly or not, the families are all brought into it.
Dark is the show to watch if you are frustrated with mystery and sci-fi TV shows flopping at the end of their runs. This series impressively ties up all its storylines, while also keeping the logic of the show fairly sound despite the exceptionally complicated time travel elements. It will leave you with a new standard for horror-mystery shows.
Twin Peaks (1990-2017)
Twin Peaks is almost certainly to have been on Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber, and J.J. Abrams’ minds when they began planning Lost. The definitive, supernatural mystery show, Twin Peaks, ran for two seasons in the 1990s and then had a third season air in 2017. It also has a feature film tie-in, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.
The series is set in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington, where the corpse of a homecoming queen, Laura Palmer, is discovered on the banks of a river. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is called in to investigate, and in this sleepy town of Twin Peaks, Cooper finds more mysteries than he bargained for.
Twin Peaks is the definition of atmospheric. The title card alone is enough to give off uncanny vibes, and the sense that something is horribly wrong permeates the entire show. There are episodes of Twin Peaks that are as good as anything that’s ever been on TV, and it’s a show you won’t stop watching until you’ve consumed it all.
The Leftovers (2014-2017)
The Leftovers is Damon Lindelof perfecting the story he was attempting to tell in Lost. The Leftovers asks very similar questions to Lost about technology and faith, but where Lost goes off the rails, The Leftovers keeps its story focused, ensuring that even when a mystery isn’t answered straight out, we understand its significance.
The Leftovers is set after a recent tragedy or miracle, depending on who you talk to. One day, two percent of the world’s population disappeared. The event struck people of all races, sexes, ages, and creeds, with seemingly no distinguishing factors between those who were taken and those who were left over.