These 4 long-running thrillers are perfect for a Hulu binge
These 4 long-running thrillers are perfect for a Hulu binge
‘Criminal Minds,’ ‘24,’ ‘Homeland,’ and ‘Lost’ deliver hundreds of episodes packed with killers, conspiracies, spies, and mysteries.
A great thriller binge should probably mess up your bedtime a little. You need enough episodes to really settle into the story, characters you’ll still care about several seasons later, and some kind of engine constantly pulling you forward. Maybe that’s a new killer every week. Maybe it’s a ticking clock, a possible double agent, or an island that refuses to explain itself. Hulu has all four versions covered, and every show here is complete, long enough to take over your evenings, and addictive for a completely different reason. Here are my picks for the best binge-worthy thriller shows streaming on Hulu right now.
Best binge-worthy thriller shows streaming on Hulu
Best procedural binge: ‘Criminal Minds’
This show has been on for over 20 years for a reason. Every episode of “Criminal Minds” drops the team into another awful case involving a killer whose behavior they have to understand before someone else gets hurt. The crimes can get extremely dark, but the show’s approach is simple enough to follow. Reid spots patterns nobody else sees. Garcia digs through the digital trail. JJ, Prentiss, Rossi, Morgan, Hotch, and the rest of the team figure out how the pieces fit together — then they race to stop the next attack.
That consistency is exactly why “Criminal Minds” is so easy to binge. Most episodes give you a full mystery with a beginning and an ending, but the team keeps changing underneath the cases. Reid grows from a nervous young genius into someone carrying years of trauma. JJ moves from handling the media to taking a much larger role in the field. Prentiss disappears, returns, and eventually becomes one of the people holding the whole unit together. Garcia’s humor keeps the show from becoming completely miserable. With 15 seasons and more than 300 episodes on Hulu, you can live with this group for months.
Criminal Minds
An elite team of FBI profilers analyze the country’s most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again. The Behavioral Analysis Unit’s most experienced agent is David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU who returns to help the team solve new cases.
Best action binge: ‘24’
Let me preface this by saying that starting “24” at 10 p.m. is a terrible decision and I know because I’ve done it. Every season follows one extremely bad day in the life of counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer, with each episode covering roughly one hour of that day. There are assassination plots, nuclear threats, government conspiracies, kidnappings, betrayals, and usually at least one person inside the operation who absolutely should not be trusted. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack like a man who hasn’t slept properly in years and doesn’t have time to start now.
The real-time setup makes “24” almost impossible to stop watching. An episode doesn’t really end — the clock just hits another hour while three different emergencies are still happening. Jack gets more damaged and morally compromised as the series goes on, while characters like Chloe, Tony, and President David Palmer give the chaos some emotional weight. The show keeps changing the threat, the location, and the people Jack can rely on, but the basic pressure never lets up.
Even a victory usually reveals a much larger problem waiting behind it. Plenty of thrillers use cliffhangers, but “24” builds its entire identity around making the end of every episode impossible to just turn off. Unfair? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.
24
Counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer fights the bad guys of the world, a day at a time. With each week’s episode unfolding in real-time, “24” covers a single day in the life of Bauer each season.
Best spy binge: ‘Homeland’
I still think “Homeland” is underrated. Claire Danes plays CIA officer Carrie Mathison, who becomes convinced that rescued prisoner of war Nicholas Brody has secretly been turned by the enemy. Damian Lewis plays Brody so carefully that almost every glance can be read two different ways. Carrie might be the only person seeing what’s really happening. She might also be blowing up her career and personal life because she can’t let the idea go. Mandy Patinkin’s Saul spends a lot of time trying to figure out which version is true.
What makes “Homeland” such a strong binge is that the show refuses to stay frozen inside that original mystery. It grows into a much larger international spy thriller (and becomes better for it), moving Carrie and Saul through new operations, shifting alliances, political crises, and places where nobody’s motives are clean. Carrie’s instincts are often brilliant, but trusting them can also wreck everything around her. That tension never really leaves.
The 12-episode seasons have enough room to let paranoia build without dragging the story across a full network schedule, and the performances make even quiet conversations feel dangerous. This is the heaviest binge on the list, but if you’re up for it, it won’t disappoint you.
Homeland
CIA officer Carrie Mathison is tops in her field despite being bipolar, which makes her volatile and unpredictable. With the help of her long-time mentor Saul Berenson, Carrie fearlessly risks everything, including her personal well-being and even sanity, at every turn.
Best mystery binge: ‘Lost’
A plane crashes on a remote island, and that’s really all you should know before starting “Lost.” The survivors are suddenly forced to figure out food, shelter, rescue, and whether they can trust the strangers standing next to them. Matthew Fox’s Jack immediately tries to take control, Terry O’Quinn’s Locke sees the situation very differently, and characters like Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley all bring their own baggage to the group. The island is dangerous, strange, and clearly hiding something, but the people stuck there are just as interesting as whatever might be waiting in the jungle.
The fun of binging “Lost” is watching the series keep reinventing itself. It begins as a survival thriller, then opens into a character mystery, a conspiracy story, a sci-fi puzzle, and eventually something much bigger and stranger. The flashbacks make every survivor more complicated, while later seasons start playing with time and perspective in ways that completely change how you understand earlier episodes. Some mysteries lead to answers… others lead directly into five more questions. But the characters keep the whole thing grounded, especially as their relationships, rivalries, and personal failures start mattering as much as the island itself.
Six seasons give you a full world to disappear into, and once you know where everything goes, the early clues make a second binge even better.
Lost
Stripped of everything, the survivors of a horrific plane crash must work together to stay alive. But the island holds many secrets.
More binge-worthy thriller TV shows on Hulu
‘Prison Break’
Prison Break
Due to a political conspiracy, an innocent man is sent to death row and his only hope is his brother, who makes it his mission to deliberately get himself sent to the same prison in order to break the both of them out, from the inside out.
‘Fringe’
Fringe
FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham, brilliant but formerly institutionalized scientist Walter Bishop and his scheming, reluctant son Peter uncover a deadly mystery involving a series of unbelievable events and realize they may be a part of a larger, more disturbing pattern that blurs the line between science fiction and technology.
‘The X-Files’
The X-Files
The exploits of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who investigate X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder’s discoveries that debunk Mulder’s work and thus return him to mainstream cases.
‘How to Get Away With Murder’
How to Get Away with Murder
A sexy, suspense-driven legal thriller about a group of ambitious law students and their brilliant, mysterious criminal defense professor. They become entangled in a murder plot and will shake the entire university and change the course of their lives.