It seems no matter where we look, there’s always another small town crime drama on the horizon. The latest offering, this time from Apple TV+, is “The Last Frontier,” which premiered on the streaming service in October 2025. It stars Jason Clarke (who we praised for his work on the show) as Frank Remnick, a U.S. Marshal stationed in a remote part of Alaska. His relatively dull job is given a major injection of adrenaline when a plane crashes in his jurisdiction of Fairbanks. And it’s not just any plane — it’s a plane full of fugitives on their way to prison, making the fact that there are now potentially dangerous survivors on the loose a pretty significant problem. It’s up to Remnick to track down the prisoners and bring them back in before they hurt anyone else.
With a star-studded cast that also features Dominic Cooper, Alfre Woodard, and John Slattery, “The Last Frontier” is the perfect watch as we head into the winter season. But in case you’re looking for other similar shows as you patiently await each new episode of “The Last Frontier,” which is being released on a weekly basis, here are a few other options to binge along the way.
Longmire
You might think that a state like Wyoming, which has about as many people living in it as could fit inside Madison Square Garden, wouldn’t exactly have a tremendous amount of crime. And you’d be right, in reality — it routinely ranks pretty low in crime statistics. But the way that “Longmire” — a Wyoming-set crime drama that aired in the 2010s — tells it, the place is positively rife with ne’er-do-wells. The show stars Robert Taylor as Walt Longmire, who works with his police team and even his own daughter to solve the many crimes that befoul his Wyoming community.
“Longmire” ran for three seasons on A&E before being picked up by Netflix, which carried its next three seasons before canceling Season 7. A key piece of the show’s popularity was its outstanding and well-developed supporting cast, which included Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear — who, as a member of the Cheyenne tribe, is in a prime position to liaise with the local tribal police, who operate under their own jurisdiction — and sci-fi legend Katee Sackhoff as a new deputy received arrived from the big city. There’s plenty to dig into here, both from a character and mysterious crime perspective.
Fargo
Based on the iconic movie from Joel and Ethan Coen, “Fargo” is a crime anthology series that takes us to small towns in places like Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota across its five seasons. As an anthology series, each season features a new cast of characters and focuses on a new crime story, with the frigid northern landscape providing a throughline for the show.
The first (and best) season of “Fargo” stars Billy Bob Thornton as a hitman passing through the town of Bemidji, Minnesota, where he starts to influence nebbish insurance agent Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman). Their meeting has far-reaching consequences, including a series of murders that catches the attention of two police officers played by Allison Tolman and Colin Hanks. The seasons continue in a similar vein, although they span several decades and feature all manner of crimes. “Fargo” has been a big hit with both critics and audiences, earning seven Emmys from an impressive 70 nominations in total.
Justified
If there’s one thing that could immediately make us tune into a neo-Western crime drama, it’s the promise of Timothy Olyphant in the lead role. And if there are two things, the second is Walter Goggins as his long-time nemesis. So “Justified,” which features both, is pretty much a slam dunk. Like Jason Clarke’s character in “The Last Frontier,” Olyphant plays a U.S. Marshal. His Raylan Givens is shipped off to Kentucky as a result of a misunderstanding over his dispatching of a mobster, which some might classify as murder. Givens, of course, feels it was justified. Upon his return to Appalachia, he encounters Boyd Crowder (Goggins), a member of a crime family he is intimately familiar with.
The most fascinating aspect of “Justified” is how much it blurs the line between neo-Western and just plain regular Western. It takes place in the present day, but if you dropped Givens into 19th century Kentucky and gave him the same job, he’d probably do just fine. “Justified” ran for six seasons on FX before generating a sequel series, “Justified: City Primeval,” in 2022. It’s a worthy successor to the hit show, with critics praising Olyphant’s performance.
Trapped
To a lot of people in the U.S., Iceland basically feels like the Alaska of Europe in terms of its otherworldly landscapes and frequently frigid temperatures. And indeed, its isolated locale and stunning vistas give “Trapped” a lot in common with “The Last Frontier” before we even get to the whole crime aspect of it all. “Trapped” stars Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as an Icelandic detective who is put through his paces when a mutilated body washes up on shore, and he’s tasked with discovering who was responsible for the death.
The show began life as a small-scale Icelandic drama, so the fact that it’s since been picked up by networks and distributors all around the world speaks to its quality. It can go toe-to-toe with the many popular European crime dramas, which are often so good they’re given a glitzy American reboot. Whether that’s necessary or not is another question entirely. Even if “Trapped” was to get a remake at some point down the line, it would be unlikely to match the atmosphere and craft of the original, which is a must-watch for fans of “The Last Frontier.”
Fortitude
The closer you get to the Arctic, the fewer people there are. That’s just common sense. As such, the fictional town of Fortitude — where the British-Norwegian series “Fortitude” takes place — is not called home by very many. Its island setting combined with its proximity to the top of the globe make it a remote destination indeed. In fact, there are so few residents of Fortitude that, at the beginning of the series, it has never seen a single murder. Of course, since this is a crime drama, that’s all about to change.
As a string of bizarre deaths begins to plague the formerly quiet community, the townspeople start to fall under suspicion from one another. But nothing is quite as it seems in Fortitude, and although everyone seems respectable and upright on the surface, there are more than a few secrets lurking. Spooky and extremely atmospheric (it has as much in common with the horror genre as the crime genre at times), “Fortitude” is a perfect fall watch for fans of “The Last Frontier.”