By Peter Killip.
Having bugger all in common with power tools and the like, we find this “Bosch” Playing out like a barnstorming “Cop on the edge” type show from the mid 90’s that managed to pole vault the HBO lead TV Renaissance into the modern day, emerging on the other side unchanged , confused and endearingly dated. Set in the same universe as Michael Connelly’s “The Lincoln Lawyer”, with a plethora of writing talent including Showrunner Eric Overmeyer (Homicide, The Wire etc) and novelist George Pelecanos, starring acting talent from infinitely better shows with Titus Welliver(“Deadwood”) as the titles hero, Jamie Hector and Lance Reddick ( “the Wire”- Marlo and Lt Cedric Daniels, respectively.) as his younger partner and his scheming boss.
With the nuts and bolts of a generic cop show more than accounted for, it’s a bit of a shame that there’s absolutely nothing original in this initial series to propell it further, in effect, it does indeed feel like a well thumbed holiday paperback stretched out over the space of a series and manages to revel in its trappings. Hard bitten cop living in suspiciously extravagant surroundings, despite his meagre cop salary? Check. Paper pushing bueracrats in the workplace? Check. Sleazy journalists who’d sell their ma for a scoop? Check. A nemesis who plays the whole “We’re flip sides of the same coin” card ? Check. Alienated ex wife and daughter who can’t compete with protagonist’s commitment to the job? Check!
Taking care to stumble through every genre trope imaginable is a choice that is almost admirable , resulting in a mess that I’m not sure whether is good or bad. Like a really bad smell that you have to keep going back to………..by the series’ close there washed over me a moment of euphoria that felt akin to what I imagined televisual Stockholme Syndrome would be like. Absolute unabashed brilliance……..or absolute sleepwalking dross, still unsure which.
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