Best British Noir Movies & TV Shows

A corrupt sheriff knows the secrets of everyone in town and uses that information to go unchallenged. But after the arrest of an innocent teenager, the new doctor cannot keep quiet and tries to get the community to stand up for what is right.

In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.

After World War II the crew of a motor gunboat join together to buy their old vessel and go into business for themselves. This may sound like a laudable scheme, but the business they choose to go into is smuggling.

When a ransom bid results in the death of a child, the police have only one lead – the old lady who witnessed the kidnapper using a public phone box. Though her recollection is vague, she volunteers to act as bait for the killer – telling the press that she had seen the kidnapper's face and she waits for him to attack.

A murder is investigated by both sides of the line, cops and criminals, using opposing methods. But the real line is the morality within each person and how far they will go before they cross it.

Unable to pay his bookie, a man returns to his hometown where his embezzler brother and girlfriend plot a robbery that ends in tragedy.

Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.

On a train headed for England a group of travelers is delayed by an avalanche. Holed up in a hotel in a fictional European country, young Iris befriends elderly Miss Froy. When the train resumes, Iris suffers a bout of unconsciousness and wakes to find the old woman has disappeared. The other passengers ominously deny Miss Froy ever existed, so Iris begins to investigate with another traveler and, as the pair sleuth, romantic sparks fly.

Locked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.

Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.

Belfast police conduct a door-to-door manhunt for an IRA gunman wounded in a daring robbery.

A gangster's wife drives him to kill as she pushes him to the top.

When her husband is wrongly accused of murder, an opera singer sets out to find the real culprit.

DI Cadi John and DC Owen Vaughan try to solve a case involving Mali Pryce, a young woman whose body was discovered in a stream in the woods.

When Ex Colonel Merton discovers a burglar ransacking his home, he is shocked to find out that the thief is a former soldier from his tank regiment. When the thief escapes, Merton tries to contact former members of the regiment, in order to find out what set the thief on the road to crime.

A Victorian-era murder mystery about a parlour maid that discovers that her employer may have killed his first wife.

When Richard Logan, the partner in a safe making firm, is found unconscious, on an old deserted bomb site, he finds that he has no recollection of the last three weeks. Then he discovers that the private detective, hired by his wife, has been found murdered, and a safe that his firm installed in a large country house, has been cleverly opened, and the contents are missing. So with the help of his wife, he sets out to uncover the truth.

A British policeman (John Gregson) tries to find a rich man's (Alec Clunes) son before a kidnapper's (Robert Shaw) time bomb blows.

A Liverpool juvenile liaison officer struggles with a young and dangerous pyromaniac.

In Tiger Bay, the docklands of Cardiff, rough-and-tumble street urchin Gillie witnesses the brutal killing of a young woman at the hands of visiting Polish sailor Korchinsky. Instead of reporting the crime to the authorities, Gillie merely pockets a prize for herself — Korchinsky's shiny black revolver — and flees the scene. When Detective Graham discovers that Gillie has the murder weapon, the fiery young girl weaves a web of lies to throw him off course.

Phillipe, the son of an ambassador in London, idolizes Baines, his father's butler, a kind of hero in the eyes of the child, whose perception changes when he accidentally discovers the secret that Baines keeps and witnesses the consequences that adults' lies can cause.

British melodrama about a cabbie befriending a girl caught up in the white slave trade.

Having been sent a picture of her husband, a war hero killed in France, Meg Elgin is led to believe he is still alive and arranges a meeting at a London railway station. When she arrives there with the police accompanying her, she catches sight of a man in the distance wearing an old coat of her husband's. When he is pursued and captured, he turns out to be Duds Morrison a former soldier and out-of-work actor recently let out of prison. He refuses to tell them anything, and having nothing they can charge him with, the police release him. His interest aroused by the pictures sent to Meg, her new fiancé Geoffrey Leavitt follows Morrison and tries to demand an answer from him about his sudden appearance masquerading as Meg’s dead husband.

A woman is found murdered in a house along the coast from Brighton. Local detectives Fellows and Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield.

A British woman on a visit to post-war Berlin is caught up in an espionage ring smuggling secrets into and out of the Eastern Bloc.

Fearing her husband could become a killer, a woman seeks a psychiatrist's help.

A woman who lives in Spain has trouble convincing anybody that a complete stranger has taken her dead brother's identity.

A gangster is caught and arrested by police. When he's being transported by bus -- filled with innocent civilians -- it's hi-jacked by his gang in attempt to free their boss. They hide out. As the authorities close in they threaten to torch the barn the escapee and his men are hiding in -- with their hostage inside.

A killer breaks into an apartment to steal a valuable brooch. He kills an old woman, but in fleeing he encounters a young woman on the stairs who will become his target.

The year is 1880. On the outskirts of the fictional small Scottish town of Levenford there stands a strange building, half cottage, half castle, embraced with thick stone walls. The townsfolk nickname the fortress "Hatter's Castle", for James Brodie, the man who built it. Brodie is a hatter who keeps the members of the family in fear and submission; he is brutal, arrogant, selfish and cruel. His wife, who has long been ailing, and his daughter Mary, are in awe of him. His son Angus, aged 15, alone dear to his heart, suffers under his love as the others suffer under his sternness.

When a neutral Danish merchant ship is forced to put into port after trying to evade British wartime contraband control, its captain becomes involved in a beautiful British Naval Intelligent agent's efforts to capture a group of German spies operating from a London cinema.

William Lucas plays a lorry driver who is recently out of prison. He becomes a target when it s discovered that he knows where he can find plates for making forged banknotes.

An insurance man discovers his ex-girlfriend and her husband's art-forgery/arson scam.

Double-agent Alexander Eberlin is assigned by the British to hunt out a Russian spy, known to them as Krasnevin. Only Eberlin knows that Krasnevin is none other than himself! Accompanying him on his mission is a ruthless partner, who gradually discovers his secret as Eberlin tries to maneuver himself out of a desperate situation.

Set on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, Jim (Douglass Montgomery), a once promising scientist, sets up in business as a patent medicine man selling hair tonic at the fair with his ex-army colleague Dan (Ronald Shiner). Following a fight with local hoods over pitch spaces, Jim falls for Jane (Hazel Court), the girl on a nearby candy floss stall. The two begin dating but Jim fails to mention he is already married.

A British psychiatrist devises a devilish revenge plot against his wife's lover.

When an attractive young girl is murdered, suspicion falls on several members of the local tennis club. It falls to Police Inspector Halloran to sort out all the red herrings, and finally after a confrontation at the top of the local church spire, arrest the culprit. Another fascinating look at what life was like in Britain during the 50's.

John Cummings, an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman, has his unpaid-for car stolen by one of the hoods in the employ of Lionel Meadows, the sadistic organizer of a London car conversion racket. The car was not insured, and since the police appear indifferent to his plight, Cummings decides to find it himself -- and gets himself involved in an underworld battle.

Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.

Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.

Spies pursue a stolen diary aboard the Orient Express.

The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her long-standing affair with a Frenchman.

An English scientist runs away from a research center with an atomic bomb. In a letter sent to the British Prime Minister he threatens to blow up the center of London if the Government don't announce the end of any research in this field within a week. Special agents from Scotland Yard try to stop him, with help from the scientist's assistant future son-in-law to find and stop the mad man.

Only a British cabdriver's (Richard Attenborough) wife (Cathy O'Donnell) and lawyer (Derek Farr) believe him innocent of killing a little girl.

In Mexico, a financier on the run poses as a man he just murdered, only to find out that the man was also a murderer.

In the midst of Nazi air raids, a postman dies on the operating table at a rural hospital. But was the death accidental?

P.C. George Dixon is a long-serving traditional copper who is due to retire shortly. He takes a new recruit under his aegis and introduces him to the easy-going night beat. Dixon is a classic ordinary hero but also anachronistic, unprepared and unable to answer the violence of the 1950s.

In 1984, a young programmer begins to question reality as he adapts a dark fantasy novel into a video game. A mind-bending tale with multiple endings.

A vicious gang of crooks plan to steal the wages of a local factory, but their carefully laid plans go wrong, when the factory employs an armoured van to carry the cash. The gang still go ahead with the robbery, but when the driver of the armoured van is killed in the raid, his wife plans revenge, and with the police closing in, the gang start to turn on each other.

A criminal gang sets out to pull off the heist of a large army payroll.