If you’ve been enjoying this season’s slew of gritty, underdog-themed TV then we’ve got one for you.
Following in the footsteps of Prime Video’s Countdown, Netflix’s Dept. Q and Apple TV’s Slow Horses comes Ballard, a new serialized crime drama from Prime Video, spun off from Bosch: Legacy.
Ballard stars Maggie Q. as cold case Detective Renée Ballard, a character Bosch fans will no doubt remember from Legacy’s final season. Ballard memorably crossed paths — and swords — with Titus Welliver’s Harry, but ultimately parted ways as a friend after helping him dismantle the operations of a prolific serial killer.
Now Renée is back, manning the LAPD’s new understaffed and underfunded Cold Case unit, led by a team of volunteers and reserves. Like Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb, and Dept Q’s Detective Morck, Renée has landed herself a spot here because her direct and unflinching style, coupled with her disdain for the ‘boys club’ her former LAPD colleagues have formed by circling the wagons around their own shameful past conduct, have lost her any friends on the force.
When we first meet her, Ballard and her crew are tackling two difficult cold cases. In the first, a high-profile local councilman demands answers regarding the 2001 death of his sister, Sarah. Councilman Jake Pearlman (Noah Bean) is pretty sure he knows who the killer is — the broken-hearted ex boyfriend, and number one original suspect. All he needs is for Ballard to find enough evidence to finally put him away. However when the team digs deeper, the suspect’s guilt seems less and less likely. Squeezed by the LAPD, who are in turn squeezed by Pearlman, this case needs to get solved yesterday before the entire unit is shut down.
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Case two involves the body of a John Doe found in the mountains with a bullet wound to the head. Previous video footage from a bus station shows him with a baby in his arms. Who was he, and what happened to that infant?
To solve either of those two mysteries, Renée relies on the good will and instincts of her team, including the enthusiastic but impressionable empty nester volunteer Colleen (Rebecca Field), overworked legal intern and undergrad student Martina (Victoria Moroles), kindly, formerly-retired Tommy Laffont (John Carroll Lynch), a seasoned detective and crack interrogator, and insufferable LAPD reservist Ted Rawles (Michael Mosley) a friend to Pearlman and part of the team only so that he can keep tabs on Ballard’s progress.
However it’s only when chasing up a lead on the John Doe case that Ballard meets ex LAPD officer Zamira Parker (Courtney Taylor), the missing piece her overworked team so desperately needs, and the last person to file a report on John Doe. Parker’s history with the force closely mirrors Ballard’s, and the two form an initially reluctant partnership. Together they piece together clues that suggest the case may have been deliberately buried. It’s not long before the pair uncover disturbing evidence pointing to corruption within the LAPD, a revelation that not only casts a shadow over both cold cases, and threatens to derail Ballard’s mission for justice, but endangers the life of someone on the team.
There’s a lot to like about Ballard. It’s the second of Prime Video’s summer cop shows focusing on a small and scrappy team of misfits taking on a Goliath-sized mission. Unlike Countdown, Ballard isn’t a high-octane roller coaster of stunts and action set-pieces, but it does certainly have its moments, including its very opening scene. The show will appeal to those who enjoy the mystery of a cold case, the methodical building of evidence, the occasional red herring, and of course an investigation that starts small but quickly blossoms into a much larger conspiracy. The character of Renée Ballard is drawn from Bosch scribe Michael Connolly’s books, and the show carries the competent tone of stories pulled from the pages of The Late Show, The Night Fire, or Desert Star.
Maggie Q is solidly dependable as Ballard, at turns persistent and driven, scrappy and physical, or hurt and shouldering past betrayal and trauma. Courtney Taylor is likewise intriguing as Zamira Parker, a young ex-cop from a family who learned never to trust the LAPD, now herself burned and spurned by the same institution. Both Ballard and Parker are cut from the same cloth, and their early scenes together see the pair circling each other like wary cats before suspicion and guardedness eventually gives way to trust and cooperation.
The cold case team is likewise likeable — from John Carroll Lynch’s ‘Dadly’ presence as Tommy Laffont, to quirky Colleen, and perpetually sleepy Martina. Even the irritating Rawles is engaging as a strutting peacock who slowly learns he’s missing some tail feathers. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Michael Connolly adaptation without an appearance or two from Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) himself.
With its clearly and cleverly drawn stakes, scrappy team, mysterious cases, and personal conflicts, Ballard offers a neat blend of action and intrigue that is in step, not only Prime Video’s other summer fare, but with what’s captured TV audiences imaginations most right now (perhaps with the exception of Squid Game — streaming’s most watched show).
Overall Ballard is an intriguing, smartly written and well-paced drama that will keep you up at night binging the next episode. The next chapter of the Bosch universe is in good hands.
Ballard airs all 10 episodes on Wednesday, July 9, 2025 on Prime Video.
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