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I love international crime dramas. I love them deeply and completely the way some people love reality TV. Give me a dark and gritty setting, a murdered teenager, and a detective or cop who’s just trying to do their best, by god, and I’ll probably be in for the whole 10 hours. Are they predictable and often overly brooding? Absolutely. Will that stop me? Never.

From shocking and gorgeous masterpieces like the David Tennant and Olivia Colman-led Broadchurch to more predictable and soapy options like Australia’s Glitch, these series take their time unraveling the mysteries and consequences surrounding one mystery. There’s typically a single death in the center of the story, a death that threatens to tear the show’s small community apart and drive our hero to their breaking point. Sometimes there are supernatural or psychotic elements, like the confusing reason only certain people can see the victim in Hotel Bea Séjour or Detective River’s (Stellan Skarsgård) alternatively insightful and depressing visions in River. However, for the most point, these series focus on solving one haunting crime. Of course, there are subplots and other themes to explore. For example, Happy Valley brilliantly utilizes Sergeant Catwood’s (Sarah Lancashire) persistent trauma over her daughter’s suicide to explore sexism and abuse against women. Yet at its core, this is is a show that revolves around the recurring theme of these crime dramas — broken, sad people who are forced to undergo one life-changing case.

These shows provide a great balance of superb acting and just enough mystery to make them endlessly watchable. But to me, this subgenre’s stateside counterpart is and always has been a bit lackluster. American crime dramas never feel as darkly addicting as international ones. There are exceptions, of course. Twin Peaks, The Wire, and Breaking Bad were all masterful crime dramas that helped redefine television in their own distinctive ways. There have also been some stellar American crime dramas lately, including HBO’s True Detective and The Night Of. However, when it comes to onscreen crime, our dramas either attempt to do too much or too little to achieve that sweetly addictive balance other crime shows have perfected.

Technically, Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad, The Night Of, and Big Little Lies are all crime dramas, but that category seems limiting to these expansive shows. Twin Peaks forced us to question drama and comedy, reality and fiction through the lens of David Lynch. Sure, Breaking Bad was technically about making meth, but more than that it was about a normal man transforming into a villain due to desperation and his own ego. Though The Night Of hinged on a murder and a trial, it was really about the way the legal system is stacked against its Pakistani-American protagonist, and Big Little Lies has so much going on — gossip, schoolyard drama, and an abusive relationship, just to name a few elements — it’s easy to forget about its central murder. These shows, like many prestige American shows, are incredible in their own ways, but they often feel too complicated to be considered a crime drama.

However, American crime procedurals suffer from the opposite problem. They’re so simplistic, they feel trivializing. CSI, Law & Order, and similar shows run through their disturbing cases so quickly, they rarely examining how each murder, rape, or assault charge affected anyone other than the victims. I’m not arguing against the entertainment value of these shows, but they aren’t for me. These shows are so fast and so cold, they’re borderline unwatchable. Conversely, shows like The Returned, The Fall, Case, and Marcella hit that perfect middle ground for me, taking these cases seriously without diving into lofty ramblings about the overwhelming darkness of the world.

Of course, praising these British, Irish, Danish, and Australian shows is a bit unfair. For a show to gain access to a large international audience, say through an acquisition by Netflix, it likely represents a very high standard of television. That’s certainly the case of American shows that reach international Netflix audiences, such as Better Call Saul and Orphan Black. It would make sense that some of the best shows a country has to offer would be better than their mid-level American rivals. Also, from a professional point of view, it’s easier for me to enjoy these shows as a fan rather than a critic. Because these shows have already aired and are often released a season at a time on streaming, the all-consuming coverage that’s plagued shows like The Night Of and Westworld doesn’t happen. However, even with that in mind, non-American crime dramas offer something that’s still depressingly rare in the current drama landscape — well-written female leads.

International crime dramas are packed with well-defined women, from River’s quippy Stevie (Nicola Walker) and Broadchurch’s stern Detective Sergeant Miller (Olivia Colman) to Marcella’s emotionally unstable lead (Anna Friel). These women watch as people first and genre-specific characters second — a far cry from similar American shows, which are often packed with brooding middle-aged white men. Often, these strong leading ladies go a long way in softening the entire narrative, introducing complicated thoughts on sexism and intimacy into the show’s already murky story. Yet, these these social themes are often inserted without overt explanations. They’re just another thread in the rich tapestry of these shows.

I still love American crime dramas. Like the rest of the TV-viewing world, I can’t wait for the finale of Big Little Lies, and when Season 3 of Fargo comes out, you betcha I’ll be there. But to me American crime dramas have always felt a bit like homework for an extra-curricular class — interesting enough that you want to learn more but dense enough that it’s ill-advised to zone out. Those dramas that make it overseas hit the perfect balance between dramatic and believably dark. Give me another mysterious murder and a cop who can’t decide whether or not they need a break, and I’m a happy woman.