Review: Bosch Season 6
After five seasons now, you really should be watching.
After five seasons now, you really should be watching.
The world doesn’t necessarily need another television crime drama, but if it’s good there’s room.
Bosch is good.
Season six of the Amazon Prime series is available and it’s just as reliable as the five seasons that preceded it.
Bosch is as reliable as any other crime drama…it’s just better.
Even after six seasons perhaps being a streaming show on Amazon is working against it. While I don’t think Bosch would necessarily sweep awards, I suspect its profile, and that of the performances would be greater if it were on a larger network…but not one of the big ‘uns. It would lose its charm on any of the big four (NBC, CBS, ABC, or Fox).
Developed by Eric Overmyer (Law & Order) and based on Michael Connelly’s novels, Bosch is exactly what you’d expect from a cop show…it’s just better.
There is murder, politics, good guys, bad guys, questionable ethics and morality, cops pushing limits, car chases, guns, a running narrative, etc. You’ll find nothing new in Bosch. It’s just done a little better.
To be blunt, you either like this stuff or you don’t.
The fact that Bosch isn’t trying to break new ground in the genre works in its favor. It allows everyone to just focus on the story.
Titus Willever (Sons of Anarchy) plays enigmatic, yet brilliant, renegade (obviously) Los Angeles cop Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch, Jamie Hector (The Wire) is his partner Jerry Edgar or “J. Edgar” and Lance Riddick (The Wire) is angry police chief Irvin Irving. Okay, the angry police chief is a laughable trope, and casting Riddick as the chief makes it funnier (he was the chief in The Wire too) but trust me, you’ll have your laugh and move on.
All of these actors, and the below the line actors like Amy Aquino and Madison Lintz, are well developed and hold their own. But make no mistake this is Titus Willever’s show…and he carries it perfectly.
Everything in Bosch makes for the crime drama perfect storm.
Of course, like any show, there are a couple of trouble spots, but they’re petty. Bosch’s house seems way beyond a cop’s salary, but if you’ve seen the series you know it’s explained away in season one — it’s the very rare Hollywood reference.
Harry Bosch’s fascination with jazz is weird, but since I am hardly jazz’s strongest advocate this is my own hang-up.
But the real secret sauce of Bosch is Los Angeles. The city itself. In Harry Bosch’s Los Angeles, you get the singular view of a cop. The city is only populated with cops, criminals, and politicians. This isn’t Los Angeles where we see all characters, regardless of profession either trying to get in, stay in, or get out of the entertainment industry.
In Bosch, the city of Los Angeles is just as much a character in the story as Harry Bosch.
Los Angeles becomes less the city of dreamers and is presented as just another city trying to keep a handle on crime. Frankly, it’s refreshing to see Los Angeles, and all its nooks and crannies, transcend its status as the entertainment Mecca and be just another dysfunctional big city.
Everything about Bosch makes it rise above other current crime dramas. It’s not re-inventing the wheel and not doing so only continues to add to the freshness of the show.