15 TV Shows Like High Potential

Kaitlin Olson, who broke through as the immoral and messy Sweet Dee Reynolds in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," has found her next iconic TV role in "High Potential."

Olson leads the Drew Goddard-created ABC crime dramedy as Morgan Gillory, a woman with an immense and impressive intelligence quotient who moves from working as a cleaning lady to assisting the Los Angeles Police Department on their toughest homicide cases. Morgan's smarts are helpful, no doubt, but with great intelligence comes great eccentricities, and her unorthodox mannerisms often get in the way of her more by-the-book police colleagues, especially Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata).

If you're a fan of "High Potential" and want to feast on more shows like it, or if you just need some new crime shows to add to your watchlist, we've got you covered. These are 15 TV shows like "High Potential," all of which feature a blend of genres, a unique sense of humor, and some of the great small-screen actors playing some of the most iconic characters.

Emily Deschanel stars in "Bones" as forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, a socially maladjusted genius who can read the evidence of human remains and solve cases for the FBI. Along for the ride is her partner, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, much more rooted in how "normal human beings" behave, and more than willing to razz Brennan for her lack of acumen. In fact, he gives her the titular nickname, "Bones."

Like "High Potential," "Bones" puts a lighter, dramedy-leaning spin on the police procedural, zipping along its cases with efficiency, emphasis on character dynamics, and a constant clip of humor from a variety of sources. Deschanel's performance is a little more straight-laced than Kaitlin Olson's, as she is more than willing to play the oblivious fool to her colleagues and friends.

Of these colleagues and friends, played by a wonderful ensemble cast, it's most worth highlighting Michaela Conlin as forensic artist Angela Montenegro, Brennan's best friend who similarly maintains a high level of intelligence while being more easily plugged into normalcy. Their chemistry is delightful.

Superstar Kyra Sedgwick toplines "The Closer," one of the great TNT shows, a show anyone would happily watch a marathon of on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Sedgwick plays LAPD Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, a fierce and capable officer of the law given the titular nickname The Closer because she, well, closes cases. She's a particularly great interrogator, facing down accused criminals one-on-one before procuring the crucial confession that puts everything together.

Joining Sedgwick in the colorful ensemble cast is the always-welcome J. K. Simmons as Will Pope, Brenda's superior officer who sometimes butts heads with his squad, earning the sarcastic nickname "The Vatican." (There are a lot of nicknames in these shows!)

Brenda also has a series-long relationship with FBI Senior Special Agent Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney). The pair works together on some cases, and their professional mastery turns into personal sparks that are fun and frothy to watch.

All of this makes "The Closer" an obvious companion to "High Potential," let alone a similarly pointed sense of humor underlying every episode.

You've heard of Sherlock Holmes. British, genius detective, accompanied by Dr. John Watson. But have you heard of him in the modern day? In New York City? With a gender-flipped Watson?

Enter "Elementary," an underrated CBS procedural that stars Jonny Lee Miller as a contemporary Sherlock Holmes who moves across the pond to assist the New York City Police Department on a variety of difficult cases, many of which are adapted from original author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original works.

Lucy Liu plays Dr. Joan Watson, a former surgeon who lost a patient and gave things up as a result. She starts the series as Holmes' sober companion (he was a drug addict in the original books, too), but soon finds a new sense of purpose when assisting him with criminal cases.

"Elementary" is a cozy watch with a welcome sense of bite and grit, tempering a sometimes edgy, brittle sense of humor with warmth and empathy for its characters. And watching Sherlock Holmes use his powerful intellect to solve impossible-seeming cases is always a treat!

A spin-off of both "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight," "Elsbeth" stars the ever-endearing Carrie Preston as attorney Elsbeth Tascioni. Elsbeth is quirky, bubbly, and bright – the perfect vibe to catch criminals with their pants down (metaphorically speaking).

"Elsbeth" has just as much in common with "Columbo" as "High Potential." Like Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo before her (and Kaitlin Olson's Morgan Gillory while we're at it), Preston's Elsbeth is unlike any other detective-styled character you've seen. There's no sense of grittiness, buttoned-down professionalism, or even what we typically see of televised competence. Elsbeth feels beamed in from a sitcom, or like if Tina Fey rebooted "Murder, She Wrote," and the show is so much the better for it.

Plus, "Elsbeth" tends to tell us who the criminal is from the jump, and the pleasure of the show comes not from "who did it," but "how is Elsbeth gonna catch them?" And with the caliber of talent they get to play these criminals — Stephen Colbert, Steve Buscemi, and Dianne Wiest, just to name a few — there will be plenty of "howcatchem" entertainment to enjoy.

A one-season wonder unfairly canceled by Netflix, "The Good Cop" gave Josh Groban — yes, that Josh Groban, the full-throated baritone who's also a great comic actor — a unique showcase to expand his range.

Groban plays NYPD lieutenant TJ Caruso, a buttoned-up, mild-mannered, and by-the-book officer who tries his absolute best to avoid ruffling any feathers under any circumstance. Sharply contrasting him is his father, Tony Caruso (Tony Danza), a disgruntled cop who just got paroled from a police corruption conviction. Tony wants to prove to his former colleagues that he can still solve crimes and be of service, and he wants to show his straight-laced son that taking moral shortcuts is sometimes the best way to get quick results.

As developed by "Monk" creator Andy Breckman, and based on an Israeli series of the same name, "The Good Cop" blends procedural pleasures with serialized character development ably, using its central odd-couple pairing to great comedic effect.

If you dig "High Potential," why not start at the source?

Yes, the ABC comedy is an American adaptation of the French-Belgian series "HPI," which stands for "Haut potentiel intellectuel," or high intelligence person. Created by the trio of Stéphane Carrié, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, and Nicolas Jean, the comedic crime procedural stars Audrey Fleurot, whom you might recognize from "Call My Agent!", as Morgane Alvaro, a cleaning lady with a high IQ who stumbles her way into consulting on cases for the police department.

Many of Morgan Gillory's eccentric behaviors and decisions (and many of the case details from the first season of "High Potential") are borrowed directly from "HPI." But it's satisfying and interesting to compare Alvaro's performance to Kaitlin Olson's. Olson is a bull in a china shop, loud and brash and proud, but Alvaro's take on the similar character feels a little quieter, more grounded, and more severe.

Even if you've seen every "High Potential" episode twice, when you dive into the OG series, you'll find just as much quirky crime-solving and authority-busting repartee with an extra seasoning of Frenchness for flavor.

Police procedural titan Jesse L. Martin ("Law & Order," of course) stars in "The Irrational," a two-season NBC jawn that offered an accessible, pleasing hook to its premise while experimenting with what we might expect from an average version of that show.

Martin plays Professor Alec Mercer, a behavioral science expert based on the real-life expert Dan Ariely and his book, "Predictably Irrational." Mercer knows how human beings tick based on a set of unspoken social rules that we might call "rationality." Because Mercer can see the code, so to speak, he's hired by a litany of high-powered organizations, including law enforcement and government agencies, to solve a variety of interesting issues.

If there's one thing Martin knows how to do, it's solve weird crimes on television, and it is a pleasure to watch the master work. Most excitingly, he steps outside of the "Law & Order" box of performance style, giving Mercer some unpredictable verve. Martin even gets to sing in Season 2, which he should be allowed to do in every show and movie from now on.

The great Tim Roth headlines the three-season Fox drama "Lie to Me," a show that plays like  the darker and edgier cousin to "High Potential" (complimentary). Roth's character is Dr. Cal Lightman, also based on a real expert, the late psychologist Paul Ekman. Like Ekman, Lightman is a purveyor of applied psychology, which takes theories surrounding human faces, microexpressions, and body language, and puts them into practical use to make the world a better place.

In the case of Dr. Lightman, that means solving crimes with his private company, The Lightman Group. He's assisted by colorful colleagues, including Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams), an expert on voice and language, Eli Loker (Brendan Hines), a greener agent who practices honesty above all else, and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund), a troubled young agent whom Dr. Lightman has pegged as his protégée.

It's a lovely ensemble cast, and it's endlessly satisfying fun watching them read their perps and crack their cases. But Roth's performance in particular is a wonder to behold. He feels like Dr. House ratcheted even further into the darkness. Roth doesn't care about how he's perceived as a TV personality, and makes for quite the character.

Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) used to be a psychic. But he didn't actually possess mind-reading powers; he was just a charming con man who knew how to read people. After a tragedy triggered by his hubris took away his family, Jane gave up on the psychic business and began consulting with the California Bureau of Investigation, using his heightened perception to solve difficult cases. And now you're all caught up to start watching "The Mentalist."

Baker's performance is a dapper delight. The actor oozes charm and suaveness that teeters on the line of earnest and obnoxious, depending on who he's talking to. It gives every investigative scene an extra special charge, and gives his scenes with his more straight-laced colleagues at the CBI some helpful friction, too (though his relationship with his superior officer Teresa Lisbon, played by Robin Tunney, heightens to some surprising places).

And if you tire of the procedural cases-of-the-week, "The Mentalist" has a series-long big bad known as Red John, and the less we say about that journey, the better.

Creator Andy Breckman broke the mold when he came up with "Monk," a lightly comedic mystery procedural starring the delightful Tony Shalhoub as Detective Adrian Monk.

Other fictional detectives on this list have heightened abilities that sometimes function as superpowers. That's not the case with Monk. He has a series of debilitating neuroses, phobias, and disorders, most prominently obsessive-compulsive disorder. As such, he consults on cases for the San Francisco Police Department with protracted difficulty, much to the viewers' benefit.

With many shows on this list (and, arguably, with "High Potential"), the enjoyment comes from a distanced reverence to the gifted detective's brilliance, their almost otherworldly ability to do things mere humans cannot. Monk, on the other hand, is an endearing and relatable detective. While we may not all suffer from the exact same maladies as him, we understand what it's like to jump into a stressful situation we don't have a handle on. We feel his pain, making his adventures that much more delightful.

Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) has a party trick. She can tell when anyone is lying, any time. How does she communicate this knowledge? By slipping out a single word in Lyonne's signature rasp, a word we cannot publish here, a word that involves excrement produced by a bull. And what does she do with this trick? Why, solve crimes, of course.

Created by Rian Johnson, who knows a thing or two about resurrecting mystery formats with his "Knives Out" movies, "Poker Face" puts Charlie and her "bull excrement" detector in the center of largely self-contained, case-of-the-week episodes. It feels a little like "Columbo," not just in its inverted, "howcatchem" structure, but in its eccentric yet gifted protagonist. Like Frank Columbo, Charlie has a shaggy, hangdog quality, an unassuming countenance that makes hapless criminals feel as though they're truly getting away with something.

But Charlie always finds the truth. She can't help it, in fact. And every episode is a perfect little puzzle box of detection and discovery, with a great sense of humor and filmmaking style to boot.

An always breezy and charming series (and three spinoff films), "Psych" is one of the crown jewels in USA's "blue sky" tonal branding, named after the omnipresent bright, sunny days that emphasize the characters' sense of warmth and fun, even amid the show's darker genre conventions.

Created by Steve Franks, the show stars James Roday Rodriguez as Shawn Spencer, a fast-talking goofball with an impressive photographic memory and ability to read people. He uses these gifts to convince people that he's a bona fide psychic, and begins consulting on criminal cases for the Santa Barbara Police Department. Along for the ride is Shawn's straight-laced best friend and partner, Burton "Gus" Guster (Dulé Hill), who tries his best to keep Shawn's antics in check while enabling the big lie to keep the crime-solving business a-booming.

Rodriguez and Hill's chemistry is electric; the two spar, tease, and love each other with authenticity and glee. It makes "Psych" the perfect counterbalance to some of the darker-toned detective series out there.

A seven-season joy originally airing on TNT through the 2010s, "Rizzoli & Isles" is full of banter, fiendish cases, and one of the great cast pairings of 21st century television.

Developed by Janet Tamaro from a series of novels by Tess Gerritsen, "Rizzoli & Isles" puts together two TV icons, Angie Harmon ("Law & Order") and Sasha Alexander ("Dawson's Creek"), and lets them loose. Harmon plays Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, a tough-talking and sarcastic bull in a china shop. Alexander is Dr. Maura Isles, a medical examiner and forensic expert for the Boston Police Department, and a woman who is more withdrawn, awkward, and good-hearted.

The title pair, inhabited wonderfully by these actors, make for a delightful odd couple as they solve a litany of unusual cases. For example, the series-long big bad, Charles Hoyt, has a history of necrophilia among his serial murders.

And yet, the show plays far away from dourness. It's a sparkly and punchy watch, full of dark humor and crisp dialogue.

Starring another TV icon, Nathan Fillion ("Firefly"), "The Rookie" stands out from the police drama pack with its endearing, character-driven premise, one that feels in conversation with "High Potential."

Fillion plays John Nolan, a sad-sack divorcé who needs a change. After feeling newly invigorated by helping stop a bank robbery, he moves to Los Angeles and, at the ripe old age of 40, enrolls in the LAPD academy. He graduates and becomes the oldest rookie on the force, working with his younger yet more experienced colleagues to solve cases and keep up with the young bucks.

The dynamic is simple yet constantly entertaining, with Fillion contorting his well-trod "rakish rogue" persona into vulnerability and low-status comedy to engaging results, especially when he interacts with his skeptical superior officers like Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) and Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones). It makes for a network cop procedural with a welcome sense of push-and-pull in and out of the formula viewers are well used to.

Arguably the codifier of USA's "blue sky" image, "Suits" isn't just the show that put Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, on the map. It's a compulsively watchable, effortlessly entertaining legal drama that must become your next binge watch.

"Suits," created by Aaron Korsh, takes place in a well-regarded and cutthroat New York City law firm, headed by the ruthless Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres, impeccable). Joining the office full of sharks is Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), a college dropout who nonetheless impresses with his photographic memory. He works as an associate to Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), a charismatic attorney who wears the absolute dickens out of a suit.

Together, the pair takes on cases with smarts, wits, and handsomeness, developing quite the engaging chemistry over the show's nine seasons. "Suits" also features a great ensemble cast, including Rick Hoffman as the neurotic and opportunistic finance lawyer Louis Hill, and yes, Markle as the ambitious paralegal Rachel Zane. Talk about high potential.