If The Airport Chaplain hooked you with Tobias Wallace’s constantly ringing phone, unconventional problem-solving and determination to help anyone who crosses his path, you’re probably looking for more shows with the same mix of workplace chaos, humour and human drama. Hugo Weaving’s Tobias isn’t content to stay within the limits of his official job—he gets involved, bends rules and somehow becomes the person everyone calls when something goes wrong.
The best shows like The Airport Chaplain aren’t necessarily set in airports. What matters is that same feeling of entering a busy workplace filled with strangers, emergencies and complicated people, usually with an unconventional central character who believes solving the problem matters more than following procedure. Here are 15 shows to watch next.
15 Best Shows Like The Airport Chaplain To Watch Next
1. New Amsterdam – 5 Seasons
Dr. Max Goodwin arrives as the new medical director of one of America’s oldest public hospitals and immediately begins challenging the bureaucracy around him. Instead of accepting that things have always been done a certain way, Max keeps looking for practical ways to make the system work better for patients.
Among shows like The Airport Chaplain, this may be the closest match to Tobias himself. Max is compassionate, stubborn and endlessly willing to get involved, even when helping someone means ignoring the usual way of doing things. Just as Tobias’s methods create friction with airport management, Max repeatedly frustrates administrators because solving the human problem matters more to him than following procedure.
IMDb: 7.9 | Where to Watch: Peacock
2. The Pitt – 2 Seasons
Set inside a Pittsburgh emergency department, The Pitt follows doctors, nurses and patients through demanding shifts where one crisis is barely resolved before another arrives. Personal problems, institutional pressures and life-or-death decisions constantly collide.
The biggest similarity to The Airport Chaplain is the workplace itself. Like an airport, the emergency department is a contained world through which strangers continuously pass, each carrying a completely different problem. Both shows find compelling human stories inside a huge public institution while following the people everyone turns to when something suddenly goes wrong.
IMDb: 8.9 | Where to Watch: HBO Max
3. Shrinking – 3 Seasons
Therapist Jimmy Laird is grieving the death of his wife when he decides to stop behaving like a conventional therapist. Rather than carefully maintaining professional distance, he begins telling patients exactly what he thinks and sometimes becomes directly involved in their lives.
If you’re searching for shows like The Airport Chaplain because Tobias’s boundary-crossing behaviour is your favourite part, Shrinking is one of the strongest matches. Jimmy and Tobias genuinely want to help people, but both regularly create complications because they refuse to stay neatly inside the limits their professions are supposed to have.
IMDb: 8.2 | Where to Watch: Apple TV
4. Royal Pains – 8 Seasons
After losing his hospital job, emergency-room doctor Hank Lawson unexpectedly becomes a private doctor in the Hamptons. Before long, unusual medical emergencies seem to find him everywhere, forcing him to improvise solutions far outside a normal clinic.
Hank has the same “call me when something goes wrong” quality that makes Tobias so entertaining. Both men operate outside conventional structures, improvise when necessary and gradually become unofficial fixers whose jobs involve far more than their original professional descriptions.
IMDb: 7.2 | Where to Watch: Buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store and Fandango at Home
5. High Potential – 2 Seasons
Morgan Gillory is a cleaner at the LAPD whose extraordinary intelligence allows her to notice clues experienced detectives overlook. After unexpectedly helping solve a case, she becomes a consultant, even though her unconventional personality doesn’t always fit comfortably with police procedure.
Morgan and Tobias share an instinct for seeing solutions that more conventional professionals miss. Both also create tension with rule-following colleagues who question their methods even when those methods repeatedly work. The combination of humour, problem-solving and institutional friction makes this one of the better shows like The Airport Chaplain.
IMDb: 7.6 | Where to Watch: Hulu, Disney+
6. Leverage: Redemption – 3 Seasons
A group of highly skilled reformed criminals uses its talents to help ordinary people who have been exploited by powerful corporations, wealthy individuals or institutions. When the normal system cannot deliver justice, the team creates its own solution.
This takes Tobias’s problem-solving instinct to a much bigger extreme. Like The Airport Chaplain, the series is built around people who encounter a problem, realise the official route may not be enough and find a creative workaround. Both put helping the person in front of you ahead of rigid adherence to the system.
IMDb: 8.1 | Where to Watch: Prime Video
7. Ted Lasso – 4 Seasons
American football coach Ted Lasso arrives in England knowing almost nothing about professional soccer, but his real strength is understanding people. Players, colleagues and executives gradually begin bringing Ted problems that have little to do with football.
The setting is completely different, but Tobias and Ted share an unusually powerful instinct to help. Neither limits himself to his formal responsibilities, and both gradually become emotional centres of complicated workplaces filled with people carrying problems nobody else has noticed.
Also Read: 15 Shows Like Ted Lasso
IMDb: 8.7 | Where to Watch: Apple TV
8. Call the Midwife – 15 Seasons
The nurses and midwives of Nonnatus House work in London’s East End, where every visit introduces them to a different family facing medical, social or personal difficulties. Their jobs frequently require compassion and practical help far beyond delivering babies.
Like The Airport Chaplain, this is ultimately a show about the countless private dramas hidden inside an ordinary working day. Both series move between different people’s lives while showing how one compassionate professional can become an unexpected source of help during someone’s most difficult or important moment.
IMDb: 8.6 | Where to Watch: Netflix, Thirteen, WETA+; Free on Hoopla
9. This Is Going to Hurt – 1 Season
Set inside an overstretched British hospital maternity ward, the series follows junior doctors dealing with endless patients, impossible workloads and a healthcare system that rarely gives them enough time or resources to do everything properly.
The tone is sharper and darker than The Airport Chaplain, but the pressure feels remarkably similar. Phones ring, emergencies appear without warning, professional boundaries become messy and the people keeping an enormous institution functioning are constantly forced to improvise.
IMDb: 8.3 | Where to Watch: AMC+, Sundance Now
10. The Lincoln Lawyer – 4 Seasons
Mickey Haller runs his Los Angeles legal practice from the back seat of his Lincoln, moving between clients, courtrooms and crises while relying on charm, contacts and unconventional strategies to stay one step ahead.
Fans looking for shows like The Airport Chaplain may enjoy Mickey for the same reason Tobias is so watchable: he is always moving, always answering another call and usually trying to fix several people’s problems at once. Neither character automatically assumes the official route is the best route.
Also Read: 15 Shows Like The Lincoln Lawyer
IMDb: 7.8 | Where to Watch: Netflix
11. House – 8 Seasons
Dr. Gregory House is a brilliant diagnostician whose ability to solve seemingly impossible medical cases is matched by his contempt for rules, authority and conventional professional behaviour.
House is far less warm than Tobias, but the basic workplace tension is familiar: an employee is extraordinarily effective while simultaneously driving management mad because of how he gets results. If Tobias’s clashes with authority are one of your favourite parts of The Airport Chaplain, House offers a much more abrasive version of the same dynamic.
IMDb: 8.7 | Where to Watch: Peacock
12. The Resident – 6 Seasons
Young doctor Devon Pravesh enters Chastain Park Memorial Hospital believing medicine works according to clear rules, but senior resident Conrad Hawkins quickly shows him how complicated reality can be. Doctors regularly face situations where hospital policies, business interests and patient needs point in different directions.
Like Tobias, Conrad believes helping the person in front of him can be more important than obeying the institution around him. Both shows repeatedly explore the tension between human judgement and systems designed to keep enormous workplaces under control.
IMDb: 7.8 | Where to Watch: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+
13. Doc Martin – 10 Seasons
Brilliant London surgeon Martin Ellingham relocates to a small Cornish village and becomes its local doctor. Unfortunately, his exceptional medical ability comes with terrible bedside manners, meaning every new patient can create an entirely new social problem.
Doc Martin shares the community-fixer rhythm found in shows like The Airport Chaplain: a distinctive professional works at the centre of a place where everyone eventually seems to need him. Tobias is considerably warmer, but both men become difficult to replace because so much of their community’s problem-solving seems to run through them.
IMDb: 8.4 | Where to Watch: Acorn TV
14. Extraordinary Attorney Woo – 1 Season
Brilliant rookie lawyer Woo Young-woo approaches cases differently from everyone around her, frequently noticing details and possibilities her more experienced colleagues overlook. Each new client brings another complicated legal problem and another human story.
The connection to The Airport Chaplain comes from watching an unconventional central character solve problems that more traditional professionals struggle with. Both shows mix individual cases with workplace relationships and find warmth in the people behind seemingly routine institutional problems.
Also Read: 15 Best Korean Dramas of All Time
IMDb: 8.5 | Where to Watch: Netflix
15. The Bear – 5 Seasons
Talented chef Carmy Berzatto returns to Chicago to take over his family’s struggling restaurant, only to discover that keeping the place alive requires managing money problems, damaged relationships, difficult employees and one emergency after another.
The restaurant and airport couldn’t look more different, but their working environments have something important in common. Both shows capture the feeling that a complicated workplace could collapse at any second while a small group of people improvises solutions behind the scenes. Anyone who enjoys the workplace chaos in shows like The Airport Chaplain should find plenty to recognise here.
IMDb: 8.5 | Where to Watch: Hulu
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What makes The Airport Chaplain unusual isn’t simply its airport setting. It’s Tobias: a man whose official job seems far too small to contain everything he actually does. He listens, negotiates, finds solutions, intervenes in crises and repeatedly steps into situations that technically aren’t his responsibility.
That’s why the best shows like The Airport Chaplain range from hospitals and law firms to football clubs and restaurants. New Amsterdam is the strongest match for Tobias’s compassionate rule-breaking, The Pitt best recreates the constant flow of strangers and emergencies, while Shrinking captures the messy consequences of a professional who simply refuses to respect normal boundaries.
Streaming availability listed above is for the US and may change over time.