"Watching the Detectives" is a 1977 single by English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello. His fourth single overall, it was his first hit single on any national chart, peaking at #15 in the UK and also charting modestly in Canada, Australia and the U.S. The song featured on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at No. 354.

The song, with a lyric about a lover who would rather watch TV, sung over a simple reggae beat, was described by Rolling Stone as "a clever but furious burst of cynicism", and they also described the song as "indisputably classic".Allmusic's Mark Deming described the song: "a skeletal minor-key melody that slowly but effectively wound itself into a solid knot of fierce emotional tension, pushing the bitter lyrical atmosphere further into the darkness". Costello described how he wrote the song:

I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I'd been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to another inductee's record, the Clash's first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. Then I wrote "Watching the Detectives".

Costello considers "Watching the Detectives" his favourite song from the first five years of his career. He later performed the song with a big band arrangement, which he admitted was "a desecration to people who love the tenseness of the original recording", but explained that "the story that's going on, and the musical allusions in the original arrangements, relate very much to the realization of this song as an orchestral piece using the film music feeling and the swing rhythms of '50s detective shows."

The single, produced by Nick Lowe, was recorded in May 1977. The backing band on the song were Steve Goulding on drums and Andrew Bodnar on bass guitar, both from Graham Parker's band, The Rumour. Keyboard overdubs were added later by Steve Nason (later better-known as Steve Nieve). It was the first top 40 hit in the UK Singles Chart for Costello, reaching No. 15 and spending a total of eleven weeks in the chart.

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