Shows Like Dexter — K-Dramas With the Same Dark Anti-Hero Thrills

The closest Korean equivalent to Dexter in terms of sheer ambition and darkness. Mouse follows both a serial killer and the detective hunting him across a genuinely shocking narrative that subverts everything you expect about who the monster is. It asks the same question Dexter does — is the killer made or born? — and goes further than Dexter dared with the answer.

Three police officers with deeply compromised pasts work together to investigate crime while hiding their own darkness. Watcher has Dexter's moral complexity — investigators who aren't innocent, a justice system they've broken faith with, and the question of whether bad means are ever justified by good ends.

Twin brothers — one a crime novelist, one a prosecutor — discover their stepfather may be a serial killer. Adamas has Dexter's DNA: a killer embedded in respectable society, a protagonist who must become something dark to expose them, and constant tension between what is legal and what is just.

A woman discovers her husband has been living a secret second life, and the more she investigates, the darker the truth gets. Hide has Dexter's interest in the gap between the face someone shows the world and who they actually are — and the violence that secret can do.

A detective willing to cut every corner and break every rule to get results, partnered with someone who forces him to confront what he's becoming. Good Detective 2 has Dexter's moral corruption arc — the slow acknowledgment that the methods you use shape who you are, not just the results.

A man with no memory of the previous night discovers he may be responsible for a series of murders. Black Out has Dexter's central horror: the killer who doesn't fully know himself, who must investigate his own darkness. The internal monologue structure echoes Dexter's narration.

A cold case detective is drawn into an investigation where the killer seems to be performing for her specifically. The Art of Sarah has Dexter's fascination with killers who have an aesthetic — who treat murder as craft — and the investigators who become uncomfortably drawn into their logic.