Bosch (TV series)

Season 1

As the pilot opens, Bosch is tailing a suspect. Eventually cornering him in an alley, Bosch shoots the suspect when he reaches in his pocket. The incident is shown later in the episode in two separate flashbacks. When seen from Bosch's point of view it appears that there is something in the suspect's hand that falls in a puddle. When the incident is recounted by the plaintiff's lawyer during a wrongful death suit, there is clearly nothing in the suspect's hand and Bosch is shown planting a gun. Whatever really happened, he is cleared by the department. The show fast-forwards to two years later where Bosch is being sued by the family of the suspect in a wrongful death civil suit.

Feeling that he has to do something as a police officer, he agrees to trade with two other detectives to take the weekend shift, where he is called out on a case which turns out to be a suicide, and a second case where a doctor reports his dog found a human bone in the woods.

The bone leads to more bones and the coroner determines the skeleton is that of a small boy who was horribly abused and beaten, then buried in the woods. The boy has been dead since at least 1989, and could have been anything from 10 to 12 when he died, but was so horribly treated that it is not certain exactly how old he was. The details of the boy's mistreatment – more than 40 broken bones, some having healed while others were relatively recent – and his death are so grisly that Bosch has to step away and go into the restroom to splash water on his face and sit down on a commode for a moment to regain his composure.

Production

Amazon Studios announced on October 31, 2013 that it had given the green light to Bosch for production. The hour-long pilot starred Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch, with Annie Wersching, Amy Price-Francis, and Jamie Hector co-starring. Henrik Bastin of Fabrik Entertainment was the producer and Jim McKay directed.

According to Connelly, "a fair amount of changes" were made "to the world of Harry Bosch" "in making the shift from page to screen." In the series, Harry "is 47 years old and a veteran of the first Gulf War in 1991," when he was a member of a Special Forces team clearing tunnels, but "he has now been a police officer for twenty years, with a one-year exception when he re-upped with the Army after 9/11, as many LAPD officers did. He came back to the force after serving in Afghanistan and again encountering tunnel warfare."

On November 4, 2013, the 13-day shoot began in Los Angeles, while Connelly kept a daily set journal.

The pilot premiered on Amazon Prime in February 2014 to allow customers to vote to decide if more episodes should be made. In March 2014, Amazon announced that they had commissioned Bosch for a full series.

All ten episodes of the first season of Bosch were released for viewing on Amazon Video on February 13, 2015. Portions of the first episode were changed from the pilot, including the addition of Mimi Rogers to the cast to replace Amy Price-Francis as plaintiff's attorney Honey Chandler and the addition of a scene in which Bosch testifies in court and is questioned about his background by Chandler.

On March 18, 2015, Bosch was renewed for a second season. On July 16, the series was nominated for the Outstanding Main Title Design award at the 67th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, along with Manhattan, American Horror Story: Freak Show, Daredevil, Halt and Catch Fire, and Olive Kitteridge; the award was won by Manhattan.

On April 1, 2016, Bosch was renewed for a third season. On October 16, 2016, Bosch was renewed for a fourth season.

Main cast

Season 1

Season 2

Recurring cast

Season 1

Season 2

Reception

Reviews of Bosch have been generally positive. Metacritic gives the series a score average of 71 (out of 100) based on 16 critics.

Cory Barker of TV.com wrote that the series is "rock-solid and generally enjoyable without ever making much of an attempt to push boundaries," and praised Amazon Studios for "producing a show based on a book that somehow reproduces the experience of reading."

Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times wrote that, despite an "impossibly long" "list of brooding, taciturn small-screen police detectives," Bosch "proves gripping" because its "plotting and pacing...draw you in...like a good page-turner."

Noel Murray of the A.V. Club remarked that "the best thing about Bosch is how well it captures Connelly’s Los Angeles," while noting that "the series’ biggest stumbling block is that it’s stubbornly slow-paced" despite the fact that "the slow-drip approach makes sense."

Brian Lowry of Variety wrote that "the series has the texture and tone of an old-fashioned detective yarn," but said that "the transition from page to screen ... proves too talky in places and clunky in others". He remarked that the show boasted "good casting and a strong sense of L.A. noir", but opines that the series "feels undercooked".

Hank Stuever of The Washington Post called Welliver's performance "nicely built out of smirks and smolders," and wrote that the show's "unvarnished, unglamorous L.A. is a far more intriguing, far more complex setting for a story."

Brian Moylan of The Guardian praised the "noir" feeling of the show and considered it a step above NCIS, but did not like the similarities to too many other cop shows, calling the series "samey."