While everyone’s heard of heavy-hitting streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video, a surprising number of niche platforms are also worth your time, especially if you enjoy specific genres or types of programming. And if you’re in any way into British mysteries, cozy crime dramas, or thoughtful prestige series that make you cry, then Acorn TV should probably be part of your regular viewing rotation.
Originally a physical media distributor selling VHS tapes (and then DVDs) of international dramas and comedies, Acorn transitioned to streaming in the mid-2000s, launching a standalone service offering a curated selection of similar titles aimed at Anglophiles and people who generally love the shows on PBS’s Masterpiece. Though AMC Networks purchased a controlling interest in the platform in 2018, incorporating it into a larger portfolio that includes AMC, Sundance Now, We TV, and BBC America, Acorn has remained largely independent, creating its own successful originals and doubling down on its soft-edged, comfortingly familiar brand of shows.
A pioneer in the realm of the cozy murder mystery—shows that prioritize character development, feature little overt gore, and follow comfortingly predictable plot beats—Acorn now has the formula down to a science. Featuring quirky characters, beautiful scenery, and often starring familiar big-name actors looking for a pivot into a different phase of their careers, they’re fun, funny, and satisfying in ways that involve very little of the “grim and gritty” vibes so prominent in the procedural space. Here are 10 shows to help you dive into what Acorn TV has to offer.
Agatha Raisin
Cast: Ashley Jensen, Jamie Glover, Jason Merrells, Matthew Horne, Amybeth McNulty, Lucy Liemann, Jason Barnett, Katy Wix, Jodie Tyack
Number of seasons: Four
What if Miss Marple was brighter, bolder, and altogether louder? That’s kind of the general gist of Agatha Raisin, a mystery series about a former London PR whiz who relocates to the Cotswolds and becomes an amateur sleuth in her village of Carsley. Based on M.C. Beaton’s book series, the plucky and fashionable Agatha—those clothes!—makes for the sort of crime solver who would probably be deeply annoying in real life but is great fun to watch here as she bulldozes her way through both neighbors and standards of decorum to get to the bottom of a case.
(Photo: Acorn TV)
Art Detectives
Cast: Stephen Moyer, Nina Singh, Sarah Alexander, Larry Lamb
Number of seasons: One
A case-of-the-week-style procedural that’s also one part history lesson and one part quirky character study, Art Detectives is a great example of the ways Acorn TV is steadily putting satisfying new spins on its familiar cozy mystery format.
Moyer is incredibly charming as the offbeat DI Mick Palmer, a likable nerd who’s as interested in art history, random relics, and historical trivia as he is in solving crimes. The head of the Metropolitan Police’s Heritage Crime Unit, he investigates everything from theft to forgeries and the occasional murder that results from such incidents. A lovely departure from grim detectives battling personal traumas or Sherlock Holmes types out to show off their own brilliance, Mick is full to bursting with a kind of awkward, academic joy that will feel deeply familiar to anyone who’s ever gone off on a 20-minute esoteric tangent that none of your friends asked for. A second season is in the works.
A heart-wrenching limited series about two parents forced to face an impossible choice (and an extensive legal battle) about how far to go to keep their disabled daughter alive, Best Interests is well-acted, emotional, and impossible to get through without a sizable box of Kleenex. The story follows Nicci (Horgan) and Andrew (Sheen), whose youngest daughter has a rare form of muscular dystrophy that has kept her in and out of hospitals and emergency wards for most of her life. But when her latest infection leads to seizures and brain damage, the doctors recommend stopping treatment.
Told with deep empathy and featuring a remarkably complex pair of performances from Horgan and Sheen as Nicci and Andrew find themselves on opposite sides about what’s truly in the best interests of their child, nothing about this series is an easy watch. But it bolsters its philosophical questions about life, death, and disability with thoughtful and downright funny flashbacks to Marnie’s life with her family, showing us the human cost of a much larger medical debate.
Dead Still
Cast: Michael Smiley, Aidan O’Hare, Eileen O’Higgins, Kerr Logan
Number of seasons: One
Sporting one of the more unconventional premises on this list, Dead Still is a historical mystery set in 1880s Ireland that revolves around the practice of Victorian-era memorial portraiture. (Yes, this is basically death photography.) Smiley stars as a celebrated pioneer in the field who is known for his especially “lively” photos of the dead, who finds himself drawn into a series of murders that appear to be linked to his work. The show’s frequently grim subject matter is lightened by an occasionally irreverent sense of self-awareness, which manages to poke gentle fun at some of the stranger period conventions of the time, even as it treats the very real emotions of grief and loss with care.
(Photo: Acorn TV)
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
Cast: Essie Davies, Nathan Page, Ashleigh Cummings, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Richard Bligh
Number of seasons: Three, plus follow-up movie Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears
One of the pioneers in the plucky lady detective subgenre that’s still going strong today, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is part period mystery series, part feminist manifesto, and part absolutely incredible will-they/won’t-they romance. Though the series is set in 1920s Australia, the titular Miss Phryne Fisher (Davis) feels thoroughly modern, a glamorous, witty, single, and unapologetically sexual woman who solves crimes in a stunning array of fabulous outfits. (Miss Marple this is not, is what we’re saying.) Bonus: The opposites-attract slow-burn that develops between Phryne and the more straight-laced Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Page) is a true partnership of equals, and sexy as hell to boot.
Mayflies
Cast: Martin Compston, Tony Curran, Ashley Jensen, Tracy Ifeachor, Rian Gordon, Tom Glynn-Carney
Number of seasons: One
Acorn TV may be known for its crime dramas, but this is also a streamer that imports a surprising amount of dramas that seem geared solely to make you cry. (See: Best Interests.) Based on Andrew O’Hagan’s 2020 novel of the same name, the series is a deeply moving exploration of male friendship, end-of-life politics, and grief. It follows Tully (Curran) and Jimmy (Compston), two best friends from school whose longtime relationship is tested when Tully is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Determined to end his life on his own terms, he asks Jimmy to come with him to a clinic in Switzerland so that he can die with dignity.
The narrative shifts between the heartbreaking struggles of the present day and flashbacks to the pair’s euphoric youth as teens in 1980s Scotland and Manchester, illustrating the depth of their bond and the ways their relationship has changed over the years. Curran and Compston are wonderful together, infusing Tully and Jimmy’s bond with lived-in affection, and the two-part series handles heavy, difficult issues with grace and sympathy for all involved.
(Photo: Acorn TV)
Murder Before Evensong
Cast: Matthew Lewis, Amanda Redman, Amit Shah
Number of seasons: One
Acorn TV’s answer to PBS’s long-running mystery series Grantchester, which involves an attractive series of Anglican vicars solving crime in a bucolic village, Murder Before Evensong is set several decades later but has very similar vibes. Based on the 2022 novel of the same name by The Reverend Richard Coles, the series is set in 1980s England and follows Canon Daniel Clement (Lewis) in the fictional village of Champton, a parish that has charmingly low-stakes problems like whether to finally install a lavatory in the ancient local church. But things take a dark turn when Daniel begins to get threatening letters over his ministry to a local AIDS patient, and a dead body turns up in the sanctuary.
The show is a fairly traditional kind of whodunit, given extra punch through the presence of Redman as Daniel’s abrasive mother Audrey, and the deliberate kindness and compassion Daniel displays to all he encounters. It’s not especially easy to depict faith on television these days, but Murder Before Evensong’s expansive understanding of how those who believe are called to mirror God’s love to the lonely and the lost is warm and refreshing.
My Life Is Murder
Cast: Lucy Lawless, Ebony Vagulans, Bernard Curry, Rawiri Jobe, Alex Andreas
Number of seasons: Five
The cozy crime drama that started it all for Acorn TV, this New England-set series created the blueprint that many shows after it would follow. Lawless stars as Alexa Crowe, a former homicide detective who retires from her precinct to become a private detective at home, in between bouts of baking bread, hanging out with her cat, and mentoring a new young protege (Vagulans). While the mysteries themselves across the show’s five seasons to date are light and fairly predictable, Lawless is just as convincing at catching killers as she ever was swinging a sword on Xena: Warrior Princess. (She’s got incredible comedic timing, too.)
Some people like to watch cozy mysteries for the familiar formula, with their predictable tropes, general lack of violence, and assortment of regular people who somehow manage to become crime solvers alongside a variety of real detectives. Others like to watch it for the scenery, often full of lush English countryside, seaside resorts, or other picturesque locales. Signora Volpe is one of Acorn’s most dazzling efforts in that latter category, set in the stunning Lazio and Umbria regions of Italy, and could probably double as a travel ad.
The series follows a former MI-6 agent (Fox) who heads to Italy for her niece’s wedding, only to become embroiled in an intriguing local murder case when a body turns up. A story that’s as much about fixing the broken bonds of family as it is crime-solving—though there is obviously plenty of that, along with the occasional threat from her spy past—the show’s at its best when it’s poking at the complicated dynamic between Sylvia and her formerly estranged sister, Isabel (Fitzgerald). The show has been renewed for a third season.
(Photo: Acorn TV)
You’re Killing Me
Cast: Brooke Shields, Amalia Williamson, Tom Cavanagh
Number of seasons: One
Acorn TV’s first cozy mystery that’s decidedly non-British is set in a quaint coastal New England town and is noticeably missing the accents we’ve come to expect from this genre. But the series, in which Shields plays a successful crime author who teams up with an out-of-work podcaster and aspiring writer (Williamson) to solve crimes, is more charming than it has any right to be. Shields and Williamson make for an unexpectedly warm, likable investigative duo, and their cross-generational relationship swiftly evolves into something more than simple Gen X versus Gen Z laughs. Bonus: The slow-burn flirtation between Shields’ Allie and Cavanagh’s former big-city detective is delightful. The series has been renewed for a second season.
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