20 best shows like Up the River (1930)

A grieving teen finds an unexpected connection with two classmates at her new high school after they all land in the same Shoplifters Anonymous group.

Syd Burnett has left her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective. Paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna, a working mom with an equally complex past, Syd is pushed to examine whether her unapologetic lifestyle might be masking a greater personal secret. These two women don't agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.

A pitch-black comedy anthology set in the present day, as our heroine Veronica Sawyer deals with a very different but equally vicious group of Heathers. Based on the 1988 cult classic film.

Weeds is an American dark comedy-drama series created by Jenji Kohan. The central character is Nancy Botwin, a widowed mother of two boys who begins selling cannabis to support her family after her husband dies suddenly of a heart attack. Over the course of the show, she and her family become increasingly entangled in illegal activities.

Neal Caffrey, a con man, forger and thief, is captured after a three-year game of cat and mouse with the FBI. With only months left serving a four-year sentence, he escapes to look for Kate, his girlfriend. Peter Burke, the FBI agent who initially captured Caffrey, finds and returns him to prison. This time, Caffrey proposes a deal with the FBI, as part of a work-release program. After some hesitation, Burke agrees, and thus begins this unconventional arrangement where Caffrey helps Burke apprehend white collar criminals.

A medical student who becomes a zombie joins a Coroner's Office in order to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat so that she can maintain her humanity. But every brain she eats, she also inherits their memories and must now solve their deaths with help from the Medical examiner and a police detective.

Murphy is a flawed and irreverent woman who just happens to be blind and is the only “witness” to the murder of her drug-dealing friend, Tyson. When the police dismiss her story, she sets out with her dog, Pretzel, to find the killer while also managing her colorful dating life and the job she hates at Breaking Blind — the guide-dog school owned by her overprotective parents.

A hotheaded widow searching for the hit-and-run driver who mowed down her husband befriends an eccentric optimist who isn't quite what she seems.

Boston Legal is an American legal dramedy created by David E. Kelley and produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television for ABC. The series aired from October 3, 2004, to December 8, 2008. Boston Legal is a spin-off of long-running Kelley series The Practice, following the exploits of former Practice character Alan Shore at the legal firm of Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

When they're not hanging out at their favorite hot dog stand pontificating on what they'd go through to enjoy a night with their favorite female celebrities, Jared Franklin and Peter Bash are chasing down their latest clients...sometimes literally. With business cards in hand, they're ready to nab a client within seconds after a car accident, arrest for solicitation or any other incident where their legal services may be needed. Once in the courtroom, they show their flair for the dramatic and the shocking.

Rake is an Australian television series, produced by Essential Media and Entertainment, that first aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ABC1 in 2010. It stars Richard Roxburgh as rake Cleaver Greene, a brilliant but self-destructive Sydney barrister. The show airs in the United States on DirecTV's Audience Network. The second season began on 6 September 2012. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has also renewed the show for a third season Each episode entails Greene defending a different client. The Fox Network in the USA has commissioned an American version of Rake, starring Greg Kinnear as the lead character, renamed Keegan Deane for American audiences.

Detective Lieutenant Everett Backstrom is a man with no filter. After a five-year exile to the traffic division for offensive behavior, he has returned from disgrace to lead Portland's newly minted S.C.U. Tasked with navigating the city's most sensitive and serious cases, he must solve each crime as he tries, and fails, to change his own self-destructive behavior. Based on renowned Swedish criminologist and novelist Leif G.W. Persson’s hit series of books of the same name.

A hit man from the Midwest moves to Los Angeles and gets caught up in the city's theatre arts scene.

A contemporary and culturally resonant drama about a young programmer, Elliot, who suffers from a debilitating anti-social disorder and decides that he can only connect to people by hacking them. He wields his skills as a weapon to protect the people that he cares about. Elliot will find himself in the intersection between a cybersecurity firm he works for and the underworld organizations that are recruiting him to bring down corporate America.

In this mismatched buddy cop dramedy, an amazingly handsome, happy-go-lucky FBI agent is paired with a local, hard scrabble Michigan homicide detective. As they solve crimes together, their polar opposite methods only slightly outweigh their disdain for each other.

Ex-cop and recovering alcoholic Hank Dolworth partners with his best friend, former criminal Britt Pollack, in an unlicensed private investigation business. The series is set in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California, although it is portrayed as a distinct town, with Dolworth having once been a member of the fictional Ocean Beach Police Department.

Frank Tagliano (Steven Van Zandt), is a former member of the New York mob. After testifying in a trial in the United States, Tagliano is relocated to Lillehammer in Norway through the FBI's witness protection program. Frank Tagliano was intrigued by Lillehammer when he saw television images of the Winter Olympics in 1994, and therefore chooses to start his new life there. The transition from being a feared and respected gangster in New York, to become an unemployed immigrant in Norway, is not simple. Frank discovers that to get up and in the Norwegian rural society, he must resort to the old, ruthless methods. The spelling of the series title alludes to Tagliano's dog Lily, and the way that Frank and some other anglophones pronounce the town's name.

Walter Sherman, an Iraq War veteran, has the extraordinary ability to help people find the unfindable.

Dr. Temperance Brennan and her colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab assist Special Agent Seeley Booth with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless.

A true-crime satire that explores the aftermath of a costly high school prank that left twenty-seven faculty cars vandalized with phallic images.

Three women living in three different decades: a housewife in the '60s, a socialite in the '80s and a lawyer in 2018, deal with infidelity in their marriages.

Starting over isn’t easy, especially for small-town guy John Nolan who, after a life-altering incident, is pursuing his dream of being an LAPD officer. As the force’s oldest rookie, he’s met with skepticism from some higher-ups who see him as just a walking midlife crisis.

James, a disgraced firefighter turned grifter, seizes a chance, illicit opportunity to reverse his life’s worsening course as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown, who turns out to be far more dangerous than he appears.

Follow a disillusioned teen recruited into a storied high school for assassins. Maintaining his moral code while surviving a ruthless curriculum, vicious social cliques, and his own adolescent uncertainties may prove fatal.

A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.

The year is 1993. 14-year-old Alex Ryabinin lives a normal teenage life - looking for adventure, trying to protect himself from hooligans, does not want learn music, does not know how to meet girls and which adults to follow as an example. On the one hand - an honest but poor family with a saleswoman mother and a father who is a docent, on the other - the dangerous world of an Afghan veteran Uncle Alik. And there's also the girl Zhenya, whose encounter triggers a series of irreversible events that will forever change the life of Alex. Running away from hooligans, Alex steals a car of local criminal authority, and in an instant everything changes. Will he be able to cope with all the problems, being in the heart of events? Will he be able to save his family and finally understand who he is? Only one thing is clear - life will never be the same again. Not for Alex himself, nor for the whole of Russia.

After a serial killer imitates the plots of his novels, successful mystery novelist Richard "Rick" Castle receives permission from the Mayor of New York City to tag along with an NYPD homicide investigation team for research purposes.

The adventures of Mma Ramotswe, a Motswana woman who starts Botswana's first female-owned detective agency.

Fastlane is an American action/crime drama series that was broadcast on Fox from September 18, 2002 to April 25, 2003. On August 14, 2005 G4 began rebroadcasting the complete series. After finishing its initial run on the network, Fastlane stopped airing on G4. Fastlane also aired on TVOne sometime around 2006.

Laura Holt, a licensed private detective, opens a detective agency but finds that potential clients refuse to hire a woman, however qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious male superior whom she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events that unfold in the first episode, "License to Steele," a former thief and con man, whose real name is never revealed, assumes the identity of Remington Steele. Behind the scenes, Laura remains firmly in charge.

Tony Scali is a former Brooklyn cop now the Police Commissioner of a small upstate city. But for Scali, this is no desk job. He's a tough yet compassionate boss, a loving husband and father, and a hands-on law enforcer with an unorthodox style of bending the rules. From parenthood to politics, from sex crimes to murder cases, one man takes it day-to-day with offbeat humor and street- smart skill.

Wild Card is an American comedy-drama series starring Joely Fisher. It was broadcast in the United States on Lifetime, and on the Global Television Network in Canada from August 2003 to July 2005.

In the south of Russia, where roadside cafes alternate with ripe fruit ruins, three friends of Sveta, Marina and Lyudka work in a brothel. Their former colleague - enterprising Jeanne - went to conquer Moscow, but returned to the girls with a proposal to start a new - legal - business. Gradually, the girlfriends are absorbed by Jeanne's ambitions and are already preparing to put an end to dubious earnings. However, the way to a new life is not as safe as it may seem at first sight. But what you wouldn't do for freedom.

Keen Eddie is an American action, comedy-drama television series that aired in 2003 on the Fox Network. The series follows a brash NYPD detective who goes to London when one of his cases goes sour and remains to work with New Scotland Yard. The basic premise of the show bears a close resemblance to the popular 1980s British series Dempsey & Makepeace, the only notable difference being that the female partner has been replaced by a female housemate. Stylistically, the series derived inspiration from British feature films by Guy Ritchie, such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The soundtrack and incidental music for the first episode was provided by British techno duo Orbital. Daniel Ash of Love and Rockets scored the rest of the series.The series was scheduled to premiere during the 2002–2003 television season, but was postponed and premiered in summer 2003. The series was then moved to Thursdays with its seventh episode to help improve its ratings, but Fox canceled the series due to its low ratings of 5.1 million viewers.The American cable network Bravo picked up the series to begin airing in January 2004, including the six episodes never aired on Fox. All thirteen episodes of the series were released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment on September 7, 2004. Unfortunately, the original score was replaced due to music licensing issues.

Three "good girl" suburban wives and mothers suddenly find themselves in desperate circumstances and decide to stop playing it safe and risk everything to take their power back.

While attending a Hollywood premiere with a famous action star, a crazed fan pulls a gun—but her movie hunk turns into a coward, and it's Vallery who becomes the hero. Suddenly, she's thrown into a world of action and danger as owner of a Hollywood protection agency, Vallery Irons Protection (V.I.P.), taking risks to protect others at a price few are willing to pay.

The Huntress is an American TV series that appeared on the USA Network over subsequent summers of the 2000 and 2001 television seasons. It was inspired by a book about the real bounty hunter, Dottie Thorson, and is also a belated sequel to the 1980 Steve McQueen film, The Hunter.

Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre is an American anthology series, sponsored by Chrysler Corporation, which ran on NBC from 1963 through 1967. The show was hosted by Bob Hope, but it had a variety of formats, including musical, dramatic, and comedy.

After joining forces with a veteran bounty hunter, sixteen-year-old fraternal twin sisters Sterling and Blair dive into the world of bail skipping baddies while still navigating the high stakes of teenage love and sex.

Sam Loudermilk is a recovering alcoholic and substance abuse counselor with an extremely bad attitude about, well, everything. He is unapologetically uncensored, and manages to piss off everyone in his life. Although he has his drinking under control, Loudermilk discovers that when your life is a complete mess, getting clean is the easy part.

Off the grid and miles from civilization, Little Otter Family Camp has summer fun for everyone. Parents decompress over gin and tonics while their kids run wild, and teenage counselors fall in and out of love.Mackenzie Granger is the camp owner and director. Still reeling from her recent divorce, Mackenzie is ready for a fresh start. She is running things on her own for the first time and scrambling to keep the cash-strapped Little Otter from going under.

Married is a half hour comedy about being miserably in love. Russ and Lina Bowman can barely remember what life was like before kids, debt, and suburbia rained on their romance -- but every once in a while, in between the arguments about their declining sex life and who's driving carpool, they are reminded what drew them together in the first place -- they're best friends. The show also features Russ and Lina's friend AJ, who is recently divorced and pretending he's over his wife, and their other friend Jess, who is married to a much older man who can't keep up with her.

While traveling across the country in a run-down RV, drag queen Ruby Red discovers an unlikely sidekick in AJ: a tough-talking 10-year-old stowaway.

Fresh out of prison, world-class thief Daisy ”Jett” Kowalski is forced back into doing what she does best by dangerous and eccentric criminals determined to exploit her skills for their own ends.

A family’s lives are irreparably disrupted when the 14-year-old son is accused of murdering a fellow classmate.