I’m always willing to try a new series, and i’m generally a fan of cop shows, so i sat down this morning and watched the first episode of Amazon’s new drama, “Bosch.” The show is based on a long-running and (by all accounts) very popular series of books, but i’ve never read them, so i come to the series without any hopes or expectations in that regard.
Apart from my general predisposition to watch cop dramas, i also like many of actors in the show. Titus Welliver, who plays Bosch, has always done good work, and there are also a couple of “Wire” alumni in the show: Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick. Bosch’s immediate superior is played by Amy Aquino, who i like a lot. Some of the more peripheral characters are also played by familiar faces: Mimi Rogers as a prosecutor, Alan Rosenberg as a coroner, Abraham Benrubi (Jerry from ER) as a defense attorney.
I must say that, after the first episode, my impression is that it will have to improve if i’m going to stick with it. Bosch is a bit too much of a stereotypical breaks-all-the-rules-but-gets-the-job-done-while-looking-out-for-the-rights-of-the-downtrodden detective. It hits all the predictable marks: problem with authority; reputation for not following departmental policy; a dark secret or two in his past; smooth with the women. Hell, he’s even struggling to give up smoking, which i predict will become a recurring theme.
Now, it could be that many of the problems here are first episode issues, where they try to cram too much set-up and backstory in. While Bosch and his partner do begin investigating a crime in the first episode, most of the 45 minutes is by-the-numbers character development. I’ll be interested to see how the series proceeds as they actually start working cases.
Some of the dialog is pretty damn hokey and cliched too, much of it stemming from the standard detective story tropes i touched on above. A scene in a bar, where Bosch is having a drink with a female cop after work, is full of cheesy lines.
I’ll give it at least a couple more episodes, but i’m not overly optimistic. My gold standard for LA cop shows (and for cop shows in general) is the Ann Biderman series “Southland,” and this is no “Southland,” at least not yet. They do, however, have one thing in common: they both make good use of LA location shots. You see different parts of the city, and get a feel for the place, which is nice.
Anyone else watched any episodes yet?
[I’ve tried to avoid spoilers in this post, and maybe we should try to keep any discussion of specific plot development in spoiler boxes, given that the series was released in one go, and different people will probably get through it at different speeds.]