What’s Worth Watching: Bosch (Amazon)

Bosch, Friday, Feb. 13 (Amazon)

Though it opens on a dark and stormy night—in Los Angeles, of all places—Bosch is anything but clichéd. This classic hardboiled police drama, much like the acclaimed series of Harry Bosch detective novels by Michael Connelly that inspired it, is an engrossing 10-part series, streaming exclusively on Amazon. (It’s astonishing that it took this long for someone to adapt the Bosch books for TV, and almost as surprising to see it land on Amazon, a coup that once again establishes Amazon as a serious rival of Netflix for original online viewing.)

Titus Welliver, a tremendous character actor who often plays villains, proves perfectly suited to bring the iconic Bosch to life in all of his gruff, understated, all-business glory. Sardonic and terse, a dogged lone wolf who despises authority with almost as much passion as he pursues murderers, Harry has a lot on his plate as the series opens. He’s reluctantly appearing in court as the defendant in a wrongful-death civil suit (how timely), but he’s more interested in seeing justice done in a haunting cold case involving the newly discovered bones of a chronically abused young boy. (The 10-episode first season, available for instant bingeing, is based on Connelly’s early novels City of Bones, The Concrete Blonde, and Echo Park.) Welliver gets fine support from a cast including The Wire‘s Jamie Hector as his dapper, long-suffering partner, Alan Rosenberg as a shaggy philosopher of a medical examiner, and Annie Wersching as an overeager rookie who takes a shine to Harry. Who wouldn’t?

Bosch is the streaming equivalent of a page-turner. Dig in.