Over the years, there have been many attempts to transfer successful crime book series to the small screen. Some have been complete disasters, while others have worked well – think John Thaw as Inspector Morse or Krister Henriksson as Wallander. Heading that second category is Titus Welliver, who is brilliant as Harry in Amazon Prime’s Bosch and the subsequent series Bosch: Legacy.

There are seven series of Bosch to enjoy on Amazon Prime, and the story continues in Bosch: Legacy, which began life on the now-defunct FreeVee channel in 2022. That comprises three seasons and can now be found on Amazon Prime. 

All 10 series are excellent viewing and feature a stellar cast but, as in the hugely popular novels by Michael Connelly, everything revolves around Hieronymous ‘Harry’ Bosch. The Bosch TV series has won plaudits from the start. The settings are authentic – it is filmed in Los Angeles, after all – with Harry’s show-stopping modernist house, high up above the city, demanding a starring role.

We’ve already created a complete guide to the Bosch novels, which you can read here.

In the books Harry is a veteran of the Vietnam War. The adaptation produced by Amazon Prime brings that forward, to Afghanistan, making him a little younger in the process. There are also some extra side stories and even the addition of a dog companion in series five, but author Michael Connelly is executive producer on the show and his vital input ensures that none of the additional story strands seem out of place.

Time to take a look at the series in a little more detail – and let’s not forget the haunting theme music. It’s called Can’t Let Go by Los Angeles band Caught a Ghost and sets the tone pitch-perfectly.

Season One (Feb 2015)

Fans of the novels were waiting with bated breath as Bosch finally arrived on Amazon Prime – and boy, was this series worth the wait! Taking its inspiration mainly from the novel City of Bones, weaving in elements from Echo Park and The Concrete Blonde, the show won thumbs up from readers and TV critics alike.

Harry is under pressure – on trial for the fatal shooting of a serial murder suspect. Then a cold case involving the remains of a missing boy suddenly comes to the fore and he’s forced to confront his past. But it’s not all doom and gloom as LAPD newbie Julia Brasher (Annie Wersching) catches his eye and soon sparks fly. One of the hallmarks of this series is the meld of good ol’ fashioned police work and the departmental politics that’s always lurking there in the background. Welliver is brilliant here, but the likes of Lance Riddick as Irvin Irving, Jamie Hector as Bosch’s partner Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as Grace and the comedy double act of Crate and Barrel (Gregory Scott Cummins and Troy Evans) transfer well from page to screen.
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Season Two (March 2016)

Excitement was high as season two was due to air – could it keep up the high standards set in Bosch’s first Amazon Prime outing? The answer was a resounding yes in the 10 episodes which took their inspiration from Trunk Music, with elements from The Drop and The Last Coyote.

A dead body found in the trunk of a car on Mulholland Drive looks like a shoo-in mob hit, but Bosch is just back after suspension, and his famous gut tells him things aren’t quite so clear cut. Those unerring instincts are about to send him on the hazardous trail of corruption and collusion that stretches to Las Vegas and back. This season combines multiple storylines, and we get to share something of Bosch’s personal life with some great scenes between Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz who plays his daughter, Maddie. It’s a taste of things to come from this pair.
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Season Three (April 2017)

Using The Black Echo and A Darkness More Than Night as parallel plot lines, season three opens with Bosch still reeling from what he has discovered about the murder of his mother. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it – there’s the murder of a homeless veteran, the suicide of a serial killing suspect, and the headline-grabbing murder trial of a Hollywood director to keep him busy. One of the great things about this series is that other recurring characters are given their time in the spotlight – here, it’s Jerry Edgar, who begins to doubt the integrity of his long-time partner and has some tough decisions to make. The season closes with some tantalising loose ends that set us up nicely for season four.
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Season Four (April 2018)

Angels Flight is the book that takes centre stage in a season that exudes Los Angeles from every pore. When a high-profile civil rights lawyer is murdered on the funicular railway that gives the book its title, Bosch is assigned to lead a task force to solve the crime before the city erupts into riot. It’s a tough ask, because Howard Elias (Clark Johnson) made it his life’s work to uncover police corruption and he didn’t make many friends in the force in the process – so Bosch’s colleagues seem a little reluctant to give the case their best shot. But when did our man ever care about winning popularity contests? Instead, he relentlessly pursues every lead, even if it turns the spotlight back on his own department. Oh, and those loose ends? Some of them get tied up into a neat bow.
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Season Five (April 2019)

Bosch readers are brought almost up to date in this season, with October 2017 release Two Kinds Of Truth providing much of the plot. It’s interesting, as the story unfolds, to spot just which elements writer Michael Connelly brings into play here. We have no Mickey Haller and Bosch isn’t retired, for example, but it works extremely well.

Fifteen months after bringing his mother’s killer to justice, Bosch finds himself seeking the truth on two fronts. An old case comes back to haunt him, and serves to question his integrity. Did Bosch plant evidence to convict the wrong guy? Meanwhile, a murder at a Hollywood pharmacy exposes a sophisticated opioid pill mill. How to catch the culprits? Bosch, in disguise, goes undercover – and puts himself in grave danger in the process as well as making a new friend. The bonds between Bosch and his daughter have grown stronger through each passing season, but could this case prove a step too far for them?
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Season 6 (April 2020)

The penultimate season is based mainly on The Overlook and Dark Sacred Night, and we’re glad to see that Titus Welliver’s new co-star, Coltrane the dog, will be making a return appearance alongside all the series favourites like Edgar, Irving, Grace and Maddie. After a medical physicist is executed and the deadly radioactive material he had with him goes missing, Bosch finds himself juggling a complex murder case, a messy federal investigation and a catastrophic threat to Los Angeles. All in a day’s work for our hero…
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Season Seven (June 2021)

The announcement that this would be the final season of Bosch prompted much wailing and gnashing of teeth – and even the odd petition or two – from the fans of these exceptional adaptations. But their sadness was tempered by news that it wasn’t the last we’d be seeing of Harry (more on that later). Based on novels written 20 years apart – The Concrete Blonde from 1994 and 2014’s The Burning Room – season seven hits the ground running with a tragic New Year fire that kills two women, a child and an unborn baby. It’s arson, but who set the blaze and why? You can bet that Harry is soon on their case, the photo of young fire victim Sonia Hernandez urging him on whenever the trail goes cold. Edgar, meanwhile, has taken his eye off the ball after season six’s dramatic denouement. He’s haunted by what he did – and his work, and his relationship with Bosch, is suffering. Edgar’s story is one of several plot strands involving favourite characters that come to a satisfying conclusion as this series goes out on a high. The tension ramps up further when Bosch’s daughter Maddie finds herself in the crosshairs of a killer, bringing back memories of her mother’s murder. Bosch, you’ll be missed!
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The CFL guide to Bosch: Legacy

As fans mourned the demise of Bosch on Amazon Prime, news broke that he was to rise again on the IMDB channel, in a spinoff series that follows on directly from where Bosch season seven leaves off. Bosch, with Titus Welliver continuing in the main role, is now a private detective. Honey ‘Money’ Chandler (Mimi Rogers) and Bosch’s daughter Maddie, played by Madison Lintz, also be taking centre stage.

Season One (May 2022)

Season one of Bosch: Legacy arrived on our screens in early May 2022 on the fledgling, with-adverts, channel FreeVee. Based mainly on the Michael Connelly’s novel The Wrong Side of Goodbye, private eye Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) is given a job by Witney Vance (William Devane), the billionaire owner of an aerospace company who is coming to the end of his life. Vance loved and deserted a woman pregnant with his child – now he wants to find his heir and put things right.

Meanwhile, in a storyline that continues from season seven of Bosch, Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) is still battling the physical and mental after-effects of being shot and coming close to death. She and Bosch have unfinished business – and the way they decide to deal with it will have repercussions that echo across seasons two and three.

The legacy aspect is also underlined with the inclusion of Bosch’s daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) in the line-up, moving from a supporting role to taking centre stage as a rookie uniform cop straight out of college. Add in a stellar performance by Stephen A Chang as Mo Bassi, Bosch’s go-to tech guy, and this is a series that carries the Bosch torch perfectly. 
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Season Two (October 2023)

With some plot strands left loose at the end of season one, the second helping of Bosch: Legacy on Amazon’s FreeVee also takes elements from the 2015 novel The Crossing — minus Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer and Harry’s half-brother, who is sadly contracted to a rival streaming giant.

Instead, Money Chandler (Mimi Rogers) once more steps into the breach, and episodes one and two break with the norm as she and Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) frantically search for the missing Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz), who has been buried alive in the desert. There’s a cinematic quality to the storytelling in these early episodes – in fact, spliced together they enjoyed a limited cinema release in the US.

From episode three onwards, Bosch fans will feel much more at home with the pace as The Crossing storyline kicks in. There’s the added bonus of some familiar faces too, with Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector) making an appearance, along with our favourite crime fighting double act, Crate (Gregory Scott Cummins) and Barrel (Troy Evans)… plus some less welcome characters who will set the cat among the pigeons. Time for Honey and Harry to put aside past differences and work together if they are going to survive to the end of this one.
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Season Three (27 March 2025)

Despite fan protests and a hefty petition, season three is the last in the Bosch: Legacy canon. It’s the first to air on Prime Video from the get-go, and takes plot elements from Desert Star (2022) and Michael Connelly’s second Bosch novel, The Black Ice, that came out in 1993. The first four episodes will be streaming on 27 March, then Prime Video will drop two episodes a week the following three Thursdays, with the series finale landing on 17 April.

As chickens from seasons two and three come home to roost, the action centres on an investigation into the murder of Kurt Dockweiler which threatens to ruin the lives of Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz) and Honey ‘Money’ Chandler (Mimi Rogers). Meanwhile, the disappearance of a family haunts Harry and takes him to the limits of justice.

As Honey takes on all-comers in the race to become Los Angeles’ new DA, Maddie Bosch’s investigation into a spate of home invasions targeting women leads her into extreme danger.
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