On Prime, Is Ballard Better than Bosch?
Is the Ballard TV Series Better Than Bosch?
Yes. In the battle of Prime crime dramas, Ballard edges out Bosch. But let’s get one thing straight: Michael Connelly’s Renée Ballard novels don’t come close to his best Harry Bosch books. Not even in the same league.
Connelly hit his stride in 1994 with The Concrete Blonde and kept it going for at least a decade, topping out with The Narrows in 2004. The Ballard books, by contrast, are uneven—more like chopped-up novellas strung together.
But TV is a different story.
I didn’t expect much from the Ballard series and almost skipped it. I’ve never been wild about the novels, and Ballard herself always felt like a pale echo of Bosch. Then Prime cast Maggie Q. in the lead. My first thought: “Who?” She looked too Hollywood for a streetwise LAPD detective.
Then the show dropped in July. Critics praised it, fans piled on, and I gave in. Good call. The series is tight, tense, and better than Bosch—though the race is close.
The credit goes to showrunners Michael Alaimo and Kendall Sherwood. They skipped Ballard’s “Late Show” years stuck on the graveyard shift and jumped straight to her running the Open-Unsolved Unit, a ragtag team of volunteers and castoffs. That decision streamlines the storytelling: two central cases, clean narrative drive, no clutter.
Casting is another win. The misfit cold-case crew adds both grit and heart. John Carroll Lynch stands out as retired detective Thomas Laffont, whose quiet empathy anchors the show.
And then there’s Maggie Q. Forget the doubts—she nails it. Tough when she has to be, vulnerable when the script calls for it, and convincing enough to carry a series that lives or dies on its lead.
The storytelling outshines Bosch. Where Bosch often juggled too many cases and personal dramas, Ballard stays focused. Across 10 episodes, Ballard and her team chase two major cases: the high-profile murder of Sarah Pearlman, tied to a city councillor brother pulling strings, and a “John Doe” killing that cuts too close to home. Side cases pop up in Episodes 3 and 7, but they work as breathers rather than distractions.
At the end of Episode 6, the brass takes the Pearlman case (now involving several victims) away from open unsolved and awards it to Homicide. That means that the eighth and ninth episodes concentrate on the John Doe investigation, which treads uncomfortably close to Ballard’s world. It wraps up at the end of Episode 9, just as Ballard takes back the Sarah Pearlman case and – wait for it! – finds the killer.
Amazon has already greenlit Season 2. Unlike Bosch, there aren’t many memorable Ballard cases in the books to mine, aside from maybe The Dark Hours. But no matter—I’ll be clearing my schedule for another binge.
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Peter Moreira is the author of The Haight Mystery Series — retro mystery novels set in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Go to the home page of this website to sign up for a free prequel.
