‘Bosch: Legacy’ a seamless, soulful spinoff

Harry Bosch hasn’t missed a beat.

When it was announced that Bosch, the hit Amazon series based on bestselling author Michael Connelly’s iconic Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch, would end last year after seven seasons, countless fans (including me) mourned.

But even before we saw the last episode, a spinoff was announced. Bosch: Legacy drops today, and it’s terrific.

Titus Welliver is back and as compelling as ever as Harry. The first series ended with him quitting the Los Angeles Police Department. Bosch: Legacy picks up with him feeling his way into a new career as a private investigator.

Bosch was an ensemble show, with Harry at the center of a large supporting cast. The new series focuses on Harry and two women: his daughter, Maddie (Madison Lintz), who is now a rookie cop, and Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers), the hard-driving defense attorney with whom Harry has a long and contentious relationship.

A fourth actor gets top billing, too, playing a character new to the Bosch universe. Stephen Chang is cool as the other side of the pillow as Harry’s tech consultant, Mo Bassi. Bosch is notoriously impatient with gadgets but needs them to do his job, so Mo is the Q to his James Bond. They bond over wisecracks and jazz.

In both series, as in Connelly’s novels, setting is a character, too. Like its predecessor, Bosch: Legacy is shot in Los Angeles. One of its most important locations has always been Harry’s hillside house, with its glorious views of the vast city.

But early on, an earthquake sets the house shaking, cracking its windows and bending its supports. After it’s declared unsafe, Harry moves into his new office, which looks like it might have been Philip Marlowe’s old one.

Harry is a bit scruffier these days, and the independent attitude he long tried to keep in control is off the leash. He’s also adapting to working solo instead of having the police force behind him — if you want to search a house without a warrant, you have to pick locks.

He can choose his cases now, and he relishes that. The season’s story arc is based largely on Connelly’s 2016 novel, The Wrong Side of Goodbye, and the main case is one that strikes a personal chord with Harry. Whitney Vance (William Devane in fine form) is a dying billionaire who wants to find his first love. Long ago he was a college student who fell in love with a young Mexican woman; his Anglo parents forced him to leave her, but she’s still in his heart.

Vance wants to know if he has any heirs to leave his fortune to, but other people in his life would prefer Bosch keep his nose out of it, and they play hardball.

Harry is also pressed into service by Chandler, who nearly died during the last season of Bosch when a hit man shot her. Resurrection has left her mad as hell, and when the man responsible for the hit gets off in court, she wants revenge, even if Russian gangsters try to get in the way.

Both Honey and Harry are mentors to Maddie, who is finding that her first year on the force, in the aftermath of a couple of years of pandemic, protests and public loss of faith in policing, can be tough.

Like her father, she sometimes comes across cases she just can’t let go, like the rape of a young woman who reaches out to Maddie for help. Maddie has always worried about her father’s dangerous profession, and now Bosch finds himself in that position, which leads to a new level of connection between them, touchingly well played by Welliver and Lintz.

Welliver’s real-life kids show up in the series, too. His son Eamonn appears in a flashback as the young Harry, and his daughter Cora plays the dog walker who helps care for Bosch’s pal Coltrane. There are several other cameo appearances that fans of the Bosch ensemble cast will welcome.

Fans will also be happy to hear that this week Bosch: Legacy was renewed for a second season — especially after they watch Episode 10. Harry’s damaged house isn’t the only cliffhanger.

Watch

The first four episodes of Bosch: Legacy drop May 6 on Amazon Freevee, a free, ad-supported streaming service (formerly called IMDb.TV) and on Amazon Prime. Two more episodes will be released each Friday through May 27.