The fourth season of Amazon’s police drama Bosch starts with what could be the longest catch-up montage in television history.
So when the fourth Bosch season becomes available Friday on the streaming service, be reassured that you don’t have to know all of Harry Bosch’s tormented history to enjoy his tormented present and future.
Harry is played by Titus Welliver (top), who has found a defining character in this wild-card Los Angeles cop who isn’t cynical as much as weary. He plays the angles and takes shortcuts because he’s often the first one to see where something or someone is going, and he’s impatient to get there because that’s what cops are supposed to do.
He has tangled relationships with almost everyone, including his recently wounded partner, Detective Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector, right); his boss, Lt. Grace Billets (Amy Aquino); and the commander of his station, Deputy Chief Irving Irvin (Lance Reddick).
By chance, both Grace and Irving have recently gotten promotions which creates some angst and personal complications.
Viewers who watched the show’s previous three seasons will get more out of those subplots than those who didn't. They will also better appreciate Harry’s relationship with his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), who adores him for the good person she knows he is, but sometimes can only roll her eyes at things he does.
It’s an amusing flip of the traditional parent/teenager relationship.
Bosch on Amazon remains quite faithful to the Michael Connelly book series on which it is based. For the record, this season is adapted from the book Angels Flight.
The new story/case comes into focus about halfway through the first episode after a prominent attorney, Howard Elias (Clark Johnson), has been found murdered.
His death is of particular interest because he was a civil liberties guy and often argued that the police were not always stalwart defenders of those aforementioned civil liberties.
The victim was also a man of color and a group called the Black Guardians is involved. This gives the season a strong overt racial component that echoes too many recent real-life stories, though the mood here tilts mostly toward sadness and frustration.
Harry Bosch seems like an odd choice to catch this case in the first place, thanks to his own reputation as a bit of a rogue. It turns out, however, that he’s one of the few detectives who had no extensive personal involvement in any past cases with Elias.
From the beginning, Bosch finds his fellow cops markedly disinterested in determining what happened to Elias. They’d be much happier to buy the weak original story that his death was a random robbery gone bad.
But it’s soon clear there’s more going on, even beyond Elias having an affair, and as is the case in all the best cop thrillers, the good and bad people aren’t necessarily the most likely candidates.
Bosch doesn’t break new turf in the cop game. It covers the old turf with style, and Welliver’s quarterbacking keeps things moving down the field.
Amazon has already ordered Season 5.