I Watch TV: Bosch

Bosch

I first wrote this show up after one season; I've now been through all seven. Harry Bosch is a police detective in Los Angeles. The show is a police procedural, though the style of the characters, cases and the dirty politics and money give it a veneer of noir-sensibility. If those do not sound appealing, it’s probably not for you. If they sound okay, then it’s a really good example.

Based on a series of novels, each season blends at least two main plots, the earlier ones intersecting in some way, later ones just because the detectives have more than one job on at a time. Old cases continually spill into later seasons, which actually is in there from the start. In a prologue to the first episode, Bosch follows a man who draws a gun on him and is shot by Bosch. The b-plot of the first few episodes is a civil case being brought against Bosch and the LAPD by recurring lawyer Honey Chandler for this shooting.

The various characters and their stories all work together, not entirely slickly and completely, but as satisfying alternative views. So in the first season the dead, decayed body of a child is discovered, and there is an investigation of a crime from twenty years ago. Bosch is a father, and his daughter and ex-wife live in Las Vegas which is close, but he’s not visited. Meanwhile his own upbringing, the son of a single mother who was a sex worker who was murdered, is reported on in the trial. When a serial killer is caught by accident in a traffic stop he uses this reported information and some other tricks to learn about Bosch and the dead child and claim responsibility for the historic killing. But the traffic stop was dodgy, the patrol officer deliberately putting in the wrong license number. This gets smoothed over thanks to the officer being the son of Deputy Chief Irving, Bosch’s old lieutenant who is the series's portal into the politics of the city. Everyone is linked thematically with childhood and parenthood and it doesn’t – quite – beat you over the head with it.

Bosch has one superpower, which is to know exactly how far he can push – a gang boss, his own bosses, the law, department policy, the DA’s office, judges etc. He doesn’t quite come and out and explain when he’s dressing down others doing dodgy things, but he personally doesn’t fake evidence, he doesn’t involve anyone else (later his partner and occasionally others volunteer when he’s going a bit rogue) so it’s all on him, he doesn’t endanger the case. For example in the prologue he’s following a suspect on his own (against policy) but if Bosch catches him doing something illegal that’s not a problem for the case, and if something goes wrong it’s on him (as indeed it does when the suspect confronts him and draws a weapon [SPOILERS at the footnote]*).

Bosch describes himself as a grinder at one point and that’s sort of how it goes down. Following every lead, every suspect, until he knows what happened, then on so he can make the case. He’s also the detective that Irving goes to when he needs the job done properly, and someone who will ignore political or public pressure.

Talking of political, almost every time this turns to race. The show is specifically anchored in time, with each season telling you how many months have gone by since the last one. Because of this various policing protests occur, having, in particular, effects on Boschs’s daughter, growing up as a cop’s kid. This isn’t especially nuanced, though when a (black) civil rights lawyer is murdered and Bosch discovers some detectives slacking at the scene because who cares, he was their opponent, he sarcastically apologises for thinking they were the police. A phrase comes up a few times “three-piece suit” referring to LA being a city with white, brown and black communities, and often task forces etc. deliberately have members of all three.

The point, such as it is, is that without ever being groundbreaking or edgy or especially grim, or even hopeful, the show is always one step smarter, cooler, charming or even exciting** than it needs to be. And I always looked forward to seeing it (which was intermittent thanks to the details of my access to an Amazon screen).

Watch This: A good cop show
Don’t Watch This: There’s no such thing
The Seven Seasons Of Bosch: Consist of the entire run, but a sequel series Bosch:Legacy is ongoing with one season available on the Amazon Prime. There are some changes to the status quo and structure of the show, but it's still a noir-flavoured crime show.

 

* Bosch is found guilty of violating the suspect’s civil rights by confronting him alone against policy, which prevented a safe arrest. They award damages of $1 as the suspect was clearly guilty and pulled a gun on Bosch.

** Not every episode has an action sequence, though they always have something tense or a conflict; every season has a couple of big setpiece fights and chases.