12 Best Shows Like Elsbeth

In a TV police procedural landscape full of straight ties and sober faces, Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) of the episodic comedy-drama and “The Good Wife” spinoff “Elsbeth” breaks the mold as a breezy, brilliant attorney for whom going against the grain comes naturally. Eccentric but personable and layered in cheerily mismatched patterns, Elsbeth’s persona is a walking clapback to the manic pixie dreamgirl trope. Working side-by-side with the NYPD as a de facto detective while monitoring a consent decree for the federal government, Elsbeth is freed of the conventions that often bog down police and prosecutors. And as always, Ms. Tascioni proves to be a walking legal stealth weapon who frequently leverages others’ underestimation of her talents to her advantage. 

While “Elsbeth” is hardly groundbreaking television, the charmingly cozy procedural is a fun series that doesn’t ask too much of its viewers — something of a rarity in the era of prestige streaming dramas. Packed full of vibrant characters created by showrunners Robert and Michelle King, the offbeat “howcatchem” procedural has proven popular among audiences and critics, particularly for Carrie Preston’s work as the amiable Tascioni. The only problem with the series is what to watch when you’ve run out of episodes to binge. To tide you over, here’s a list of cozy procedurals and other Elsbeth-esque adventures with a similar vibe. 

Years before Elsbeth got her own show, the charming lawyer won viewers over in her first appearance as a minor character on “The Good Wife” — in a performance that ultimately earned Carrie Preston a 2013 Primetime Emmy for outstanding guest actress in a drama series. Although the series is tonally quite different from “Elsbeth” as a much more sober political and legal procedural drama, “The Good Wife” is set in the same universe, just in a different city. 

Like “Elsbeth,” “The Good Wife” features a strong central female character in Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies). Well over a decade after trading her law career for a role as a stay-at-home mom and taking a back seat to her state’s attorney husband Peter (Chris Noth), Alicia Florrick finds her life suddenly upended when Peter is imprisoned for his part in a sex and corruption scandal. The series follows her return to the work force at the bottom rung of the legal career ladder and all of the fascinating characters she meets along the way. It also features a long list of stellar supporting and guest actors, including familiar faces like Matt Czuchry, Christine Baranski, Alan Cumming, Zach Grenier, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Titus Welliver, and Gary Cole. During the popular show’s seven-season run, “The Good Wife” garnered 43 Primetime Emmy nominations and racked up five wins including outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Margulies in 2014.

Although “The Good Fight” is also set in Chicago and features many of the same characters as “The Good Wife” (including Elsbeth), it is as fundamentally different from “Elsbeth” and “The Good Wife” as they are from each other. Starring Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart and set after the events of “The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight” is an often absurdist legal-political drama. It uses the chess that plays out outside the courtroom in law offices and judges’ chambers as a satirical venue for exploring the post-truth era zeitgeist and its impact on those who are caught up in it.  

The series revolves around the Black-owned law office of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad (later Reddick, Boseman, & Lockhart) after Diane joins their ranks, having recently lost her life’s savings in a Ponzi scheme courtesy of Henry Rindell (Paul Guilfoyle). What follows is a complex and often nuanced examination of intersectional politics, privilege, and the increasingly strange and surreal modern times we live in — all while Diane Lockhart navigates some of her best and worst moments. A darkly hilarious, cerebral, and paradoxically soothing meditation on the white-knuckled ride of the endless news cycle, “The Good Fight” is a must-see for “Elsbeth” fans.

Even though it only ran for a total of five seasons, it’s difficult to overstate the impact of “Moonlighting,” the episodic 1980s procedural starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis that helped pioneer the dramedy/cozy mystery/romance format behind shows like “Castle” and “Bones.” “Moonlighting” finds former supermodel Maddie Hayes (Shepherd) getting into the detective business after she suddenly finds herself bankrupted by her sticky-fingered accountant. Left with little more than a handful of businesses owned mainly as tax write-offs, Maddie finds herself talked into keeping the struggling City of Angels Detective Agency by fast-talking detective David Addison (Willis). After rebranding it Blue Moon Investigations, Maddie joins the team, working alongside unconventional detective David as they team up to solve cases as varied as a gem theft, missing groom, stolen body, and even a haunting. 

With its iconic Al Jarreau theme song and a whimsical storytelling style that dabbles in meta humor, fourth wall-breaking, and genre experimentation (think musical episodes and period film dream sequences), “Moonlighting” was way ahead of its time. The snappy dialogue and captivating characters will be a treat for fans of shows like “Elsbeth,” and the romantic tension between the show’s two main characters represents one of the best examples of this trope. And you can binge all of “Moonlighting” on Hulu. 

“Psych” is a joyfully whimsical comedy procedural so packed with pop culture references, parodies, homages, and Easter eggs that it’s something of a love letter to Gen X and Millennial pop culture. The series stars James Roday Rodriguez as the psychic in “Psych,” perennial man-child Shawn Spencer. Raised by his now-retired Santa Barbara police officer dad Henry (Corbin Bernsen) to notice every little detail around him at all times, Shawn develops an eidetic memory but never gets good at holding down a job as he tends to find the concept of adult employment rather boring. That is, until he cons the current Santa Barbara police chief into believing his acute powers of observation are, in fact, due to psychic abilities — a con that allows him to solve crimes as a consultant outside the legal limitations reining in the real cops. 

Together with his bestie Gus (Dulé Hill), Shawn forms a psychic detective agency, fittingly calling it “Psych.” Santa Barbara junior detective Juliet O’Hara (Maggie Lawson) and cops’ cop detective Carlton “Lassie” Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) appear to be none the wiser as they team up with the Psych boys on all sorts of fascinating murder cases involving the likes of a spelling bee killer, the world’s greatest art thief, a dinosaur, a mummy, and even a haunted apartment building. When you’re finished with the eight-season series, there are four movies to check out beginning with “Psych: The Musical” and ending with “Psych 3: This is Gus.”

“Murder, She Wrote” stars Angela Lansbury as retired English teacher and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher as she investigates all sorts of murders around the world, with about a fifth occurring near her home in the quiet community of Cabot Cove, Maine. The premise usually follows a typical format where Jessica finds herself working alongside reluctant local law enforcement officers who are blinded by tunnel vision. Despite occasionally crossing paths with a friendly detective who likes her books, Jessica generally isn’t welcomed into an investigation with open arms but gradually proves her keen aptitude for murder investigations over the course of an investigation, ultimately winning them over. 

Like “Elsbeth,” “Murder, She Wrote” is a charming cozy mystery with a quirky, strong-minded female lead. Lansbury is a pure pleasure to watch work in the series, which won Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding costume design for a series (1986) and outstanding achievement in music composition for a series (1986). The show still has a following to this day with YouTubers like Pushing Up Roses garnering hundreds of thousands of views for their Jessica Fletcher content. 

If you only known of Emmy nominee Kaitlin Olson for her work as Sweet Dee on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” her lead role as smartypants Morgan Gillory on “High Potential” may come as something of a shock. Unlike the briny, morally messy, and chronically underachieving Deandra, Morgan is a friendly, hard-working single mom who accidentally stumbles into a gig as a police consultant after the LAPD Major Crimes Division realizes they can use her big high-IQ brain to their advantage. 

Struggling to pay her bills as a single parent of three, Morgan works cleaning offices overnight at the Los Angeles police department. Late one night when her on-the-job dancing knocks over a crime scene folder, spreading its contents all over the floor, Morgan sees something the police missed and changes their evidence board. When they realize she wasn’t wrong, Lieutenant Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) offers her the consultant gig working alongside Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata). 

Like Elsbeth, Morgan is a snappy, colorful dresser whose job lets her engage in all the fun, cerebral parts of detective work without the traditional limitations of the job. It’s a fun episodic series with a captivating lead — Olson sparkles as the polar opposite of her “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelpha” character. 

A gender-flipped take on Andy Griffith’s original “Matlock” series that ran from 1986 through 1992, the 2024 “Matlock” stars veteran actor Kathy Bates as Madeline Kingston, an affluent retired lawyer who infiltrates Jacobson Moore, a major law firm. This company just happens to be connected to the opioid overdose death of her daughter, and she is set on bringing them down in retribution for their role in the opioid crisis. Working with her husband and young grandson, Madeline conceives the new persona of Madeline “Matty” Matlock, a financially struggling widow whose dire financial straits have forced her back into the workplace. Like Elsbeth, Matty depends on others’ underestimation of her mental acuity. But while Elsbeth tends to stand out, Matty is ignored and overlooked as women of a certain age often are — a fact she uses to her advantage. 

Canonically speaking, “Matlock” is not a sequel or even a reboot to the original series, which exists as the real-world TV show Matty takes her nom de guerre from. Kathy Bates is outstanding in her portrayal of the matronly lawyer in this formulaic but fresh twist on the original concept. 

If you like the inverted detective storytelling format of “Elsbeth” that focuses more on setting up how the crime happened than who did the criming, you’ll appreciate the series widely credited as the O.G. of howcatchems, “Columbo.” Starring Peter Falk as the eponymous gumshoe, “Columbo” helped establish many of the tropes we associate with the genre today over its 10-season, decades-long run. 

Clad in his iconic disheveled beige trenchcoat-like raincoat with a cigar at the ready, the soft-spoken and outwardly affable Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective doesn’t need to make a fuss about himself to get the job done. Rather, he appears to use the appearance of a bumbling, even forgetful, working-class detective to disarm potential suspects, catching them off-guard so he’s free to probe away with his keen sense of observation. Like Elsbeth, he uses others’ underestimation of his sharpened wit to his advantage while doggedly chipping away for a vulnerability in his suspect’s story. 

A satisfying mystery about the exceptional mind behind a quintessential everyman, Columbo is a formulaic series with plenty of great episodes to check out. Once you’re finished with the 10-season binge, don’t forget to check out the “Columbo” specials.  

If you like charming, funny mysteries chock full of captivating characters you can’t get enough of, you’ll love “Only Murders in the Building.” The series follows a lot of the cozy mystery tropes seen in shows like “Elsbeth”: G-rated to PG-rated murders, quirky amateur sleuths, and loads of comedic banter. But rather than the typical episodic storytelling of a cozy mystery, “OMITB” stretches each mystery over an entire season of roughly half-hour episodes. 

Set in the Arconia, a fictional semi-swanky Upper West Side Manhattan apartment building populated mostly by residents who have lived there for decades, the series unites three Arconians who bond over a crime podcast only to get caught up in a real murder investigation together when a killing takes place in their building. The series brings together Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, who play semi-retired actor Charles-Haden Savage, struggling Broadway director Oliver Putnam, and Millennial artist Mabel Mora, respectively, in a generation-spanning friendship that eventually yields its own podcast. The series boasts a 97% Tomatometer rating and a fantastic list of guest and supporting actors including Paul Rudd, Cara Delevingne, Meryl Streep, Zach Galifianakis, and Eugene Levy. 

The “Moonlighting” of the 2010s, “Castle” is a romantic comedy-drama mystery starring Nathan Fillion as a bestselling mystery writer who ends up solving crimes, much like Jessica Fletcher before him (minus the aged wisdom). Despite his success, Rick Castle (Fillion) is an immature man full of wild ideas and snarky banter. While racked with writer’s block after recently killing off his main character, Castle finds himself called in for questioning with the New York Police Department after a copycat killer decides to use Castle’s book series as a guidebook. Inspired to write a detective he meets into his books and realizing the opportunity before him, Castle manages to talk his way into shadowing a NYPD police detective and avid Castle book reader Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), despite her initial reservations.

Despite comparably low ratings among general audiences and critics, Castle amassed a sizable fan base during its run thanks in large part to the chemistry between Stanic and Fillion. The charming delivery that made Fillion a hit on “Firefly” and “The Rookie” also help make the magic of this series. 

“Monk” stars Tony Shalhoub as its titular sleuth Adrian Monk, a San Francisco private detective suffering from often debilitatiing obsessive-compulsive disorder in the long and lingering wake of his wife Trudy’s unsolved murder. At the beginning of the series, Monk is psychologically paralyzed in his own life. Once one of San Francisco PD’s finest officers serving as a homicide detective on the force, Monk suffers such a severe setback after his wife’s death that his mental health issues ultimately cost him his job, shutting him up in his home with agoraphobia, depression, and mysophobia. 

With the help of his assistant Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), Monk starts consulting for the police department while working as a private detective. But as he ventures back out to dazzle the world with his Sherlockian intellect and deduction, Monk hasn’t resolved all of his various phobias. His struggles to reconcile those two realities while continuing to search for his wife’s killer are the makings of an entertaining series.

Combining the cozy mystery procedural format with the team procedural format behind shows like “Criminal Minds” or “Leverage” in a forensics-focused series, “Bones” deals with crime scene investigation from the perspective of a forensic anthropologist team. Loosely based on the Temperance Brennan book series by forensic anthropologist Dr. Kathy Reichs, the series follows Dr. Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her team at the fictional Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab, a Smithsonian Museum analogue, as they collaborate with FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) on various federal criminal investigations. 

Socially awkward and coded neurodivergent, Brennan is focused and rational to a fault but incredibly good at her job, a perfect complement to charming and sociable Seeley Booth’s more punch-from-the-gut personality. But Brennan isn’t the only strong female character in this Bechdel-acing series, which also stars Michaela Conlin as Brennan’s forensic artist colleague and bestie Angela Montenegro and Tamara Taylor as Jeffersonian head Cam Saroyan.