The Cleveland Plain Dealer today featured their review of New Amsterdam. See article below and at this link.
"Fox's 'New Amsterdam' isn't original, but has its charms
by Mark Dawidziak/Plain Dealer Television Critic
Monday March 03, 2008, 12:45 PM
You won't find much that's startlingly new in "New Amsterdam." The Fox series, which premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WJW Channel 8, seems derivative because, well, it is derivative.
Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as John Amsterdam, a New York homicide detective who is daring, clever and, oh, yes, immortal. He has been on the law-and-order beat since 1642. That's when the island we know as Manhattan was part of the Dutch colony known as New Amsterdam.
After heroically saving a Native American girl, John was the beneficiary of an immortality spell. He will not age until true love enters his unnaturally extended life.
Sounds a wee bit like "Highlander." It also sounds a little like the CBS vampire drama, "Moonlight," which sounded a lot like "Angel" and "Forever Knight."
But "New Amsterdam," for all its familiarity, assembles the many used parts into a fairly attractive prime-time vehicle. And with the likable Coster-Waldau in the driver's seat, it gradually picks up speed through the first three episodes.
Part police procedural, part fantasy and part romantic adventure, the dark series makes intriguing use of New York's sense of history and mystery. That's not to say "New Amsterdam" manages to avoid every Cross Bronx Expressway-style pothole.
John's voiceover narration can get clunky. The police procedural stuff is too much by the numbers. And you can see some of the dialogue coming at you like a Fifth Avenue bus.
The series is at its best, however, when the narration and plots find ways to link John's past and present.
"New York City -- beautiful catastrophe, someone once called it," John tells us during tonight's opener about the murder of a Big Apple socialite. "I call it home. . . . When you've lived here has long as I have, when you've seen what I've seen, cynicism isn't just a pose. It's what gets you through the day. And there have been a lot of days. . . . Life was cheap in New Amsterdam. Still is."
Predictably, John wears immortality as a blessing and a curse. He has his demons, including alcohol. He has hit outlets, including woodwork.
He has a new partner Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson). He has the hope of romance with ER doctor Sara Dillane (Alexie Gilmore), And he has one confidant, Omar (Stephen Henderson), the owner of a Manhattan jazz club.
"Romance, glamour, excitement -- the city has it all," John says.
"New Amsterdam" certainly has all of these elements. What it needs now is that one thing John has had in abundance -- time. It needs time to let a 17th-century hero settle into a 21st-century Fox series.
"It's the kind of thing we're dealing with in the writers' room every day," said the show's executive producer David Manson. "Finding a balance between these various elements of the show is in fact part of the challenge of the show."
While "New Amsterdam" hasn't quite found that balance, it's off to an impressive start. But Manson might need to worry more about the mortality of his star than the central character.
Calling the search for true love the main appeal of the show, Coster-Waldau said: "Isn't that the question that all of us ask? I mean, I'm married. Sometimes I love my wife to bits. Other times, I go, 'This can't be it.'
"She's in Greenland. She's not going to read what you write."
And John Amsterdam is the one who is supposed to be taking the chances.”
My New Amsterdam blog home page can be found
here.
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