A format where the main characters solve a mystery each weekly episode. Always Murder usually applies as well, but medical, other scientific, or supernatural mysteries can be solved instead.
Almost every Detective Drama sticks primarily to this format, though some recent shows (eg. the CSI franchise) has upped the ante to two murders per week, one in the A plot and the other in the B plot. Notable exceptions are Murder One, which devoted an entire season to each case, and the early seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street, in which detectives would typically work three or four cases at the same time, each case taking several episodes to close (In fact, sometimes they wouldn't solve the case at all, and a case opened in the first episode remained open in the finale). In later seasons, they yielded to network pressure and became a standard Mystery of the Week show.
Notable Examples:
- Agatha Raisin
- The Avengers
- Banacek
- Case Closed
- Castle
- Cold Case
- Colonel March of Scotland Yard
- Columbo
- Crazy Like a Fox
- Danganronpa: The Animation has one every two weeks, adapted from the original game's one per chapter.
- Death in Paradise
- Diagnosis: Murder
- Doc Martin: Either a single patient with a strange illness or a town epidemic.
- The Doctor Blake Mysteries
- Ellery Queen
- Elementary
- Engrenages inverted the case of Homicide by having Mysteries of the Week in its first two seasons, but then abandoning them entirely in favour of having multiple series-long arcs instead of just one.
- Forever
- House also arguably qualifies.
- Law & Order and its spin-offs.
- Lessons for a Perfect Detective Story
- Monk
- McMillan & Wife
- McCloud
- Midsomer Murders
- Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
- Mrs. Columbo (later called Kate Loves A Mystery)
- Murdoch Mysteries
- Mushishi
- Murder, She Wrote
- NUMB3RS
- Poker Face
- Psych
- Rejseholdet
- Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective
- Scooby-Doo
- Shoestring
- Vampire Prosecutor
- Vera
- Veronica Mars
- Whodunnit? (UK)
