Paramount's 100% RT Mystery Series Is Now Only One Month Away From Season 2

1 week ago 14

Published Jun 17, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

While Paramount+ has a lot of famous shows on its roster, their best crime mystery is only a month from returning and remains wildly underrated. There are a lot of shows available to stream on Paramount+, but there is no debate over what titles define the streaming service’s reputation in the minds of most viewers. Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has ten seasons of TV on the way across his various projects, and almost all of them are Paramount+ exclusives.

Whether it is Landman, The Madison, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, the spy thriller Special Ops: Lioness, or the Yellowstone sequels Marshals and Dutton Ranch, Sheridan has a slew of shows on the service, and almost all of them are huge hits among viewers. South Park remains one of the only other Paramount+ titles that can rival Sheridan’s output in terms of sheer viewership numbers. However, this means many less well-known titles on the streaming service risk being overlooked.

This is certainly the case with actor and writer Diarra Kilpatrick’s Paramount+ series Diarra from Detroit, a unique blend of dark comedy, character drama, and mystery thriller. Starring Kilpatrick herself as Diarra Brickland, a divorced schoolteacher, Diarra from Detroit begins with Diarra seemingly being ghosted by a Tinder date. As she searches for the man who seemed to disappear without a trace, Diarra gradually starts to unintentionally uncover an entire complicated conspiracy involving Detroit’s criminal underground.

There is a slew of mystery thriller shows on various streaming services right now, and even more specifically, plenty of existing hit shows that blend character dramedy with mystery plotting. Netflix’s The Residence, Peacock’s Poker Face, Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, and Apple TV’s The After Party all rode the post-Knives Out murder mystery boom to use the genre’s familiar conventions as the basis for winning character-centric dramedies. However, Diarra From Detroit is something different.

The Paramount+ series deserves a place on even the busiest TV viewer’s schedule because Diarra From Detroit manages a delicate tonal balance that makes the show feel like a mystery, a drama, a black comedy, and a crime thriller all at the same time. With an impressive cast that includes Kilpatrick, Watson’s leading man Morris Chestnut, and Bryan Terrell Clark, Diarra From Detroit is an inventive and original whodunit that pulls inspiration from a diverse array of sources.

The satirical mystery plotting will be familiar to fans of Search Party, but Diarra From Detroit is less cynical than that critical hit. The deservedly acclaimed Insecure features similarly funny and relatable storylines involving its central group of female friends, but Diarra From Detroit is darker than that playful sitcom. Put simply, the acclaimed series isn’t like anything else on TV.

Diarra From Detroit's Genre Mashup Is Unlike Anything Else On TV

Alia Shawkat as Dory standing in the street in NYC on Search Party

There are plenty of great character dramedies and a lot of good mystery thriller shows, from Netflix’s recently renewed A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to the procedural cop show Cross. However, the reason Diarra From Detroit earned a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is that the show, which originally aired on BET before arriving on Paramount+, offers a truly unique, original blend of both. As a character comedy, Kilpatrick’s series is a goofy, charming fun time.

As a mystery, Diarra From Detroit is a genuinely compelling thriller that offers just as many clever red herrings and effective misdirections as a more self-serious entry into the genre. No other series has been able to blend these styles so well in recent memory, meaning Paramount+’s returning Diarra From Detroit is a genuine original that truly stands out in a sea of similar shows across streaming sites.