Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: ballard, Bosch

Ballard: Changes from Books to TV Series Create a More Angsty Hero

Ballard mixes and matches elements from the Bosch and Ballard novels to fit a TV format and creates a slightly different, more angsty hero.

For those who miss Bosch: Legacy and its world, we have Ballard, featuring Maggie Q as Michael Connelly's current police detective on the inside of the LAPD. Like the Bosch shows, it's currently the best cop series on TV, filled with more authentic detail than network cop shows, including a grittier depiction of the institutional flaws of the LAPD, the use of Los Angeles not only as a location but a major character, and the pulp serial storytelling. The main character is altered to fit a TV format, and to watch it if you're a fan of the books, you might experience a bit of whiplash at the changes, but they're interesting to think about.

Cold Cases as Exile, Not Her Kingdom

In the books, Ballard is in charge of the Cold Cases unit by choice. She picked and shaped it for her own kingdom within the LAPD so she could work cases without interference from the rest of the department and avoid the politics, institutional rot, and corruption as much as possible. In the TV series, Cold Cases is her exile after she reported a senior office for sexual misconduct. The arc of the first season is her coming to accept the unit as her patch, where she can do good despite all the flaws and lack of resources.

Ballard is a Bigger Underdog in the TV Series

The first season of the TV series is a crash course in Renée Ballard, mixing and mashing details and elements from several books instead of the gradual evolution and reveal of her character. The series makes explicit that the death of her father is a mystery, while Connelly left that possibility open in the books. The TV series version a more traumatised and anguished version of the character: she's still grieving her father, and enduring trauma from her assault from a superior officer more than she did in the books. The therapist who pointed out she might be inflicting secondary trauma on herself by throwing herself into cold cases is a theme that was introduced in the latest book, which will become an ongoing factor in both the books and the series. The series' Ballard is actually more like a typical TV policewoman, her angst similar to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's Olivia Benson. In the books, she's more of a streetwise maverick who often secretly goes rogue when she needs to and is an edgier character. The first season also draws plot elements from the last six books but softens them for television.

Ballard's Relationship with Bosch is Altered from the Books

The books are currently called Bosch and Ballard because they split the story evenly between Bosch (Titus Welliver) and Ballard. The two have a surrogate father-daughter relationship that the TV series downplays to make it Ballard's show. She opens up to Bosch as a mentor figure in the show, but not quite to the extent she does in the books. Her introduction in the finale of Bosch: Legacy put her at odds with Bosch, only for him to run rings around her when the two were always on equal footing in the books. The cold case that drives season one was originally Bosch's, which draws him into her orbit again in the series, but she initially keeps him away out of pride. Once he enters the series, he becomes the elder, and she opens up to him like a disciple. It lacks the dynamism they have in the books.

You could argue that the Ballard series files away some of the edgier parts of the heroine and hammers some of the elements of the books into a more TV-friendly procedural format. Some of the writers worked on shows like The Closer, and unlike the Bosch shows, Ballard feels similar to that conventional cop show with a comfort food-style squad of cops working cases. It's still got the grittiness that Connelly brings to his stories, though, and still worth watching, but you might miss the more ruthless, wily, and lethal Ballard of the novels.

Ballard is streaming on Prime.

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