Shows Like
Shows Like Elsbeth
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
Elsbeth is the rare network show that feels like a treat. Carrie Preston reprises Elsbeth Tascioni, the brilliant and deceptively scattered attorney she first played on The Good Wife, now observing murder investigations in New York and quietly running circles around everyone. Back for season four on CBS, it runs on the oldest trick in mystery television: you see the killer commit the crime, then you watch a delightful oddball prove it. That structure has a name, the howcatchem, and if Elsbeth has you hooked on it, here is where to get your next fix.
Columbo, the blueprint
Everything Elsbeth does, Columbo did first. The rumpled detective in the trench coat invented the modern inverted mystery, where the fun is never who did it but how our deceptively bumbling hero will corner them. The famous "just one more thing" is the direct ancestor of Elsbeth's scattered charm. If you have never watched a Columbo, start with any classic episode and you will instantly recognize the shape of the show you already love. It is comfort television in its purest, most satisfying form.
Poker Face
The modern gold standard is Poker Face on Peacock, created by Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman with a knack for knowing when someone is lying. Like Elsbeth, it is an explicit homage to Columbo, a howcatchem where we watch the murder and then enjoy our rumpled heroine unravel it, with a new famous guest star each week. It is the closest thing on television to Elsbeth's exact wavelength, right down to the charismatic lead you would happily follow anywhere. This is the first show you should queue.
Only Murders in the Building
If the part of Elsbeth you love is the warmth and the comedy wrapped around the crime, Only Murders in the Building on Hulu is the perfect companion. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez play amateur sleuths turning their building's deaths into a true-crime podcast, and the show balances genuine mystery with real laughs and real feeling. It is less about the inverted structure and more about the joy of spending time with characters you adore, which is a huge part of Elsbeth's appeal too. We go deeper on its readalikes in our shows like Only Murders in the Building guide.
Monk
For another detective whose quirks are the whole point, Monk is a must. Tony Shalhoub plays a brilliant investigator whose obsessive-compulsive disorder is both his burden and his secret weapon, spotting the detail everyone else misses. Like Elsbeth, Monk is underestimated by every room he walks into, and like Elsbeth, that is exactly how he wins. It is cozy, funny, and deeply re-watchable, the definition of a show you put on to feel better.
Psych
Round out the list with Psych, the long-running comedy about a hyper-observant slacker who convinces the police he is a psychic when really he just notices everything. It shares Elsbeth's light touch and its central joke, a lead whose goofball surface hides a razor-sharp mind. If you want the mystery-of-the-week format with the comedy dialed all the way up, Psych is a bottomless well of easy, funny hours.
What makes this genre so comforting
The howcatchem and the cozy procedural work because they remove anxiety from the equation. You are not stressed about a twist, because you already know whodunit. You get to relax and enjoy the real pleasure, which is watching a brilliant, charming person be brilliant and charming for an hour. That is a very specific kind of comfort, closer to a warm bath than a rollercoaster, and it is why these shows are endlessly re-watchable. For more in that feel-good register, our picks for the best comedy shows of 2026 are a natural next stop.
How to choose your next watch
Match it to the Elsbeth ingredient you cannot live without. Here for the pure howcatchem? Columbo or Poker Face. Here for the lovable misfit detective? Monk or Psych. Here for the warmth and the ensemble comedy? Only Murders in the Building. And if you simply love watching clever people outmaneuver each other, the social-deduction chaos of our shows like The Traitors list scratches an adjacent itch entirely.
Death in Paradise
If the sunny, low-stress tone of Elsbeth is the real draw, add Death in Paradise to the pile. The long-running British series strands a buttoned-up detective on a gorgeous Caribbean island where a tidy murder turns up every week and gets solved by the end of the hour. It is pure comfort, light as a sea breeze, with the same closed-case satisfaction and the same gentle humor. The setting alone makes it a mood-lifter, and there are dozens of episodes to work through, so it is the ideal show to keep in your back pocket for a gray evening when you want somewhere warm to disappear into for an hour.
What unites every pick here is a lead you are simply glad to be around, which is the secret ingredient a lot of crime shows forget. Plot can be clever, but charm is what brings you back week after week. Elsbeth knows that, and so do all of its best companions. Chase the character, not the case, and you will never pick a dud from this list.
The catch is that these gems are spread across Peacock, Hulu, and the free-with-ads corners of the internet where the classics hide. BingeNext reads across all of it and tells you which cozy mystery is streaming on the apps you already have, so you can go straight from Elsbeth to the next one. Get TV recommendations and keep the comfort going.
Topics covered: shows like elsbeth, poker face, columbo, only murders in the building, cozy mystery
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.