‘Supernatural’ Meets ‘Hannibal’ in CBS’s Chilling 4-Part Crime Series

Published Aug 9, 2026, 11:54 AM EDT

Michael John Petty is a Senior Author for Collider who spends his days writing, in fellowship with his local church, and enjoying each new day with his wife and daughters. At Collider, he writes features, reviews, recaps, and conducts interviews. In addition to writing about stories, Michael has told a few of his own. His novella, The Beast of Bear-tooth Mountain,** **was released in 2023. His Western short story, The Devil’s Left Hand, received the Spur Award for “Best Western Short Fiction” from the Western Writers of America in 2025. Michael currently resides in North Idaho with his growing family.

If you’re looking for something that explores the paranormal with the same earnestness of the early seasons of Supernatural, but the intensity of a modern crime thriller like Hannibal, then there’s no better procedural to jump into than the aptly titled Evil. Although the program originally aired on CBS, it moved to Paramount+ for its next three seasons, as the Catholic Church assessors from different backgrounds and convictions investigate potential hauntings, miracles, and possessions. Evil is one of the more inventive shows to air on network television in recent years.

What happens when you stick a true believer, a skeptic, and an agnostic looking for a better explanation all together? Often, as you’d expect, folks come to different conclusions — and that’s precisely what made Evil so creatively engaging. As skeptical forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and atheist technical expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) are paired up with priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter), the trio are tossed into a web of conspiracies and strange phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be unexplainable. Of course, that’s the whole point. The assessors’ entire job is to ensure that whatever new case they are working is not something that needs to be dealt with by the church itself (such as an exorcism), and that’s where the conflict begins. What begins as an intelligent network procedural that finds new and creative ways to explain away the supernatural quickly turns into a streaming series completely enveloped in the demonic world.

Your answers point to the iconic universe your values, your instincts, and your particular way of seeing the world were built for. This is where you would find your people — and your purpose.

You believe in the cause — in the idea that freedom is worth fighting for even when the odds are impossible and the empire is vast.

You understand, in the deepest part of yourself, that the journey matters as much as the destination — and that the world’s beauty is worth protecting even at great cost.

You believe that love, loyalty, and doing what’s right are not naive sentiments — they are the most powerful forces in any world, magical or otherwise.

You see the world clearly — its power structures, its hypocrisies, its brutal arithmetic — and you are not paralysed by that clarity. You use it.

You believe the future is worth building — that curiosity, cooperation, and the expansion of understanding are not just ideals but the most practical path forward for any civilisation.

For four seasons, Evil fought to find the balance between faith and reason, recognizing at times that these perspectives can often be more linked than one might expect. The more the series — created by Robert and Michelle King — leaned into the otherworldly, offering a glimpse at other perspectives, like that of Sister Andrea (played by the endlessly talented Andrea Martin, who deserves her own spin-off) and Kristen’s mother and four daughters, the more we’re hooked on the entire premise. And that’s not to mention how detailed and disturbing each new demon is from the next. This isn’t exactly the type of CBS-to-Paramount+ drama you’d expect from the folks behind The Good Wife and The Good Fight, but its ability to command one’s attention and consider all possibilities is undeniable.

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