“Bosch: Legacy” isn’t so much a spinoff as a continuation of Amazon’s long-running Los Angles noir, which came to an end last year and was simply called “Bosch” for its seven-season run. This time out, with legacy on the mind, our squinty hero Hieronymus Bosch — Harry to all who know him — has handed in his LAPD detective badge and he’s working for himself, out of nondescript office, as a private investigator. If you think that means fewer dead bodies and threats of violence crossing his path, you don’t know Harry.
Played with a quietly intense charisma by Titus Welliver, the show has moved from Amazon Prime to Freevee (formerly known as IMDb TV, the free, ad-supported streaming service also owned by Amazon) and it remains something of an outlier — neither prestige nor the kind of overheated, ham-fisted cop show that still predominates on the broadcast networks. It’s a consistently good spin on the detective genre and it’s already been renewed for a second season. Wisely, showrunners Allison Berkley and Briana Vowels aren’t trying to reinvent the formula first established in the source material, aka Michael Connelly’s novels. Harry may employ some brutish tactics when necessary, but he does it sparingly and he’s more cerebral than most guys doing this sort of work. He’s the thinking man’s untangler of criminal knots.
And so: An aging billionaire hires Harry to track down the whereabouts of an old college girlfriend; she was pregnant when they split, which means this childless captain of industry may have an heir. Harry’s on the case. Two other threads dominate the season. There’s Harry’s old frenemy, the defense attorney Honey Chandler, fully recovered from the gunshot wound that nearly killed her in the final season of “Bosch.” Now she and Harry work together on occasion, leaning on their mutual expertise. And then there’s Harry’s daughter Maddie Bosch (a moniker that’s always sounded like it might be Australian slang for drunk) following in her father’s footsteps by joining the LAPD, where she is a rookie police officer, or “boot” in the parlance.
