The best detective series on Netflix isn’t even a Netflix original

If you’re in the mood to watch a detective show on Netflix, you have plenty of options, some of them extremely good. But there’s also a chaff amongst the wheat. Netflix is in the business of producing a lot of original content — the sheer volume is one of the best things about it, since you’ll never run out of things to watch — but a lot of that content can be on the trashy or unremarkable side.

Sometimes, it pays to look beyond Netflix originals. There’s one detective show available to watch on Netflix right now that blows most of the original stuff out of the water: Dark Winds, which airs natively on AMC.

Dark Winds is a prestige detective show

It’s exciting, moving, and beautiful

Dark Winds is based on the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by the late author Tony Hillerman. Zahn McClarnon plays Joe Leaphorn, a veteran tribal police lieutenant working in Navajo Country, in the Four Corners area of the American southwest. In the first season, he teams up with a new recruit named Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), who’s harboring a secret. Together, they investigate an armored car heist and a double murder that end up having a connection to an extremist group called the Buffalo Society and a corrupt FBI agent.

For the most part, that plot is wrapped up by the end of the first season, which is typical of this show. Each season centers around a different crime, meaning they can be binged in digestible chunks.

But there are themes that run through the whole show. For instance, the traumatic death of Joe’s son hangs over his character for the whole of the series so far, and some of the mysteries he and Chee look into tie directly back to it. If nothing else, this thread gives McClarnon a chance to show off his incredible acting talent. That he hasn’t even gotten an Emmy nomination for this show is a travesty.

Gordon is also excellent work as Jim Chee, as is Jessica Matten as border patrol agent Bernadette Manuelito, rounding out the show’s central trio. The mysteries these three investigate can burn slow and steady, but the show’s pace never feels slack, because the characters are so well-developed — and brought to such vivid life by the actors — that they can easily carry things while the plot builds in the background.

Dark Winds is a terrific period piece

And the gorgeous visuals are worth the price of admission alone

Dark Winds is set in the 1970s, before smartphones, Google Maps, and AI, which means the characters often have to rely on their wits alone to solve problems. That doesn’t necessarily make the show better than one set in the modern day, of course, but it is easier to get yourself into a tense situation when you can’t turn to the internet to help you figure things out.

Dark Winds digs into problems of the day, including the aftermath of the Vietnam War, mining interests making incursions on tribal land, and the forced sterilization of Native American women. The focus on Native Americans in general makes the show feel unique, as there aren’t many TV series that put a spotlight on their culture. Dark Winds does it with respect and nuance.

And if that’s enough to sell you, the show can also be jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It’s filmed mostly in New Mexico and makes full use of the stark, almost alien landscape, with lots of landscape shots that may have you hitting the pause button so you can admire it a moment longer.

There’s a catch to watching Dark Winds on Netflix

They want to get you hooked

Right now, the first three seasons of Dark Winds are available to watch on Netflix, which is great news, since Netflix is the most popular of the major streaming services and this show deserves as many eyeballs on it as it can get. However, AMC is currently airing a fourth season, which is due to run through early April. If you want to watch the new episodes, you’ll have to get AMC on cable or subscribe to AMC+.

And after watch the first three seasons, you may want to do that; it doesn’t help that critics are saying that season 4 is one of the best yet. But again, each of the seasons do more or less work as self-contained adventures, so there’s no urgent need to spend more money on a streaming service you may not have. And season 4 will likely come to Netflix sooner or later.

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One more enticement

The acting talent on Dark Winds is incredibly strong, but so is the producing talent. Showrunners Vince Calandra and John Wirth do an excellent job, aided by celebrity executive producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin, respectively a Hollywood superstar and the author of A Song of Ice and Fire. In fact, Redford and Martin make cameo appearances in one of the episodes, although I won’t say which one in case that gives you one more reason to try out the show for yourself. The cameo was actually Redford’s last onscreen appearance before the legendary actor died in September of 2025.