In Bosch: Legacy, TV's grumpiest detective returns with familiar thrills, tweaked format

One of the best things about Amazon Prime Video’s detective show Bosch is that its titular LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) detective understood that cops are generally quite grumpy people. He’s grumpy when he solves a case, grumpier when he doesn’t. He’s grumpy with suspects and colleagues and friends and family and even the dude who sells him hot dogs. Titus Welliver, who plays Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch, has been called ‘TV’s grumpiest man’ on more than one occasion and he really does pull off the persona quite convincingly. In Bosch: Legacy which is technically a spinoff but really, just the eighth season of Bosch, we see our detective retiring from the LAPD and becoming a private eye, even as his daughter Maddy (Madison Lintz) starts her career as a rookie Los Angeles cop.

Meanwhile, his enemy-turned-ally, lawyer Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers), is struggling to deal with the aftermath of season seven, where she was shot and went into a medically induced coma. She wants a personal, vigilante-like revenge against the powerful, influential man who ordered the shooting—Carl Rogers—but she decides to launch a legal campaign against him instead (at first).

Bosch: Legacy is, therefore, really three shows in one. Harry Bosch‘s own low-key adventures comprise the old-fashioned detective show, the kind that Bosch’s earlier, slow-burning seasons were. This is Bosch in Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammett mode, the classic gumshoe on the trail of a long-lost person, in this case, a potential heir to the fortune of the dying billionaire Whitney Vance (William Devane). Obviously, with billions at stake, there are those who will do anything to prevent Bosch from finding the long-lost heir, the product of a brief liaison in Vance’s youth. Welliver is adroit as ever and his voice has lost none of the sly wisdom of Bosch’s salad days.

The second show within Bosch: Legacy is a ground-level cop show, showing the nitty-gritty of everyday patrol cop life. These include somewhat tedious stretches of surveillance, low-level petty criminals being pursued on foot, and uneasy alliances being forged on the street to gather information on larger fish, so to speak. Madison Lintz excels here, and she brings out that mixture of fear and excitement very well indeed — watch the scene where she makes awkward small talk with her Latina partner and they start broaching the elephant in the room (why is a clearly privileged white girl from the posh parts of town hell-bent on becoming an ace cop?)

Finally, Honey Chandler’s scenes make up the third show within Bosch: Legacy, which is a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails courtroom drama. Think The Practice, not Suits or Ally McBeal or Boston Legal. There is very little raising of voices, there are no fancy hand gestures and absolutely no grandstanding do-gooder monologues. Instead, there is sharp, clearly defined legal dilemmas and intriguing legal grey areas that Honey Chandler utilizes to her frequent benefit. Which isn’t to say that these segments don’t have a heart — on the contrary, the very first case Honey fights after getting back to work involves a man with undiagnosed mental illnesses being falsely accused of murder by a police force too lazy to collect evidence and follow leads (instead, they coerce a confession out of this confused and hurting man, who says ‘I did it’ just to make the high-pressures situation stop).

The chief strengths of these three prongs to Bosch: Legacy are similar — common-sense writing, a no-frills philosophy to storytelling and strong, versatile performances by the lead trio of Titus Welliver, Madison Lintz and Mimi Rogers. There are memorable scenes littered across virtually every episode — when Bosch meets Whitney Vance for the first time and at his house, goes through more security checks than most airports, or when Maddie meets her Commanding Officer, the one cop who appears to be grumpier than Bosch, or when the usually calm Honey drops the F-bomb in front of a particularly unpleasant District Attorney.

Touchingly, Welliver teams up Michael Connolly, the author of the Bosch novels, to write the season finale for Bosch: Legacy and the results are spectacular. Connolly is a natural at episodic TV (he even acted well in the few cameos he had in the show Castle) and Welliver just understands Harry Bosch so well after a full 8 years at the helm. Said finale, called ‘All Ways/Always’, is a masterclass in writing a whodunit’s third act and is sure to be rated as one of the all-time great Bosch episodes (and there have been a fair few since 2014).

Bosch: Legacy is a great entry point into this universe, if you have no prior knowledge of the books or the show. It is also a treat for longtime Bosch fans, to see their hero a little long in the tooth but still fighting for the little man—and still being a big ol’ grump while at it.

Bosch: Legacy Season 1 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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