Amazon has ordered a second season of “Bosch,” it’s cop drama based on the Harry Bosch crime novels by Michael Connelly, and starring Titus Welliver as the title character, veteran LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch.
According to Amazon’s press release, the new season, likely to debut sometime next year, will be adapted from a pair of Connelly books: “Trunk Music” and “The Drop.”
Despite having read every single Bosch novel (not to mention Harry’s brief appearance in Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series, about Harry’s lawyer half-brother Mickey Haller) and being a longtime fan of Welliver and co-stars like Lance Reddick, Jamie Hector, “Bosch” season 1 did very little for me. It incorporated stories from a handful of the novels, but mainly drew on the most cliche elements of those stories, like the incompetent captain with an irrational vendetta against Bosch, or the cat-and-mouse game an escaped serial killer plays with our hero. What makes the Bosch novels so compelling isn’t their plots – I tend to forget what happens in them within a few days of reading – but the character of Bosch himself, who’s so fascinating in his intense self-righteousness that he makes the trope-heavy storylines all but irrelevant to enjoying each book. Both Welliver and producer Eric Overmyer decided to dial back on the severity of Harry’s personality a little – not to the point where he becomes a completely different character, but enough so that he becomes yet another familiar Cop Who Cares Too Damn Much.
The plot synopsis for season 2(*) also promises yet another serial killer, so unless Overmyer, Welliver and company find a way to unlock the parts of the character and his stories that don’t feel like a thousand other police procedurals, I may pass on it going forward.
(*) The full synopsis: “In the second season of ‘Bosch,’ the relentless LAPD detective will investigate the murder of a Hollywood producer who laundered money for the mob. He will also pursue serial killer Chilton Hardy and the investigations take Bosch from the Hollywood Hills down through the gritty back streets of L.A. and Las Vegas, threatening those closest to him-his teenage daughter and ex-wife.”
For those of you who watched the full season, what did you think?