Monday Nights Are Out With the Old, in With Fox's New Amsterdam

The Fame kids may have wanted to live forever, but all John Amsterdam wants to do is die.

John Amsterdam’s struggle with mortality is at the center of the new Fox drama New Amsterdam. Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is a 400-year-old homicide detective who arrived in New York as part of the conquering Dutch army in 1642. After saving a Native American girl, he was blessed with eternal life which will last until he finds his one true love, at which point he will become mortal. In the centuries since, he has loved and lost, changed professions, and watched New York City emerge from the ground up. In the series’ first episode, he finds the woman who possibly could give him back his humanity.

The pilot is very much about Amsterdam’s relationship with New York. His knowledge of the city is as extensive as you’d expect from anyone who has spent over 300 years here. In a particularly striking scene, Amsterdam takes a picture of Times Square with an antique camera and then adds the print to a wall that tracks the way the area has changed over time. The viewer gets to marvel with Amsterdam at how the city’s center has grown from ordinary streets to an extraordinary tourist site.

In the second episode, the story shifts from Amsterdam’s relationship with the city to his various relationships with women. He admits to having 609 girlfriends and many wives, none of whom were able to break his immortality. This has constantly forced Amsterdam to watch girlfriends, wives, and children grow old and leave him. Thursday’s episode highlights one of these relationships through vividly colored flashbacks interspersed throughout the show. The idea behind these flashbacks is good, but they risk becoming formulaic and clichéd. Watching the scenes, one knows all the while that these relationships didn’t work out and that these women have passed away, which makes it incredibly challenging for viewers to relate to these characters.

The biggest problem with the show is its procedural element. New Amsterdam is supposed to revolve around interesting characters, but the criminal cases in each episode should be strong enough to hold the audience’s attention on their own. The first two cases are incredibly predictable and not worth the time they take up. As long as the focus remains on the characters and not the crimes, though, the show might be more appealing.

For the most part, the visual aspect of the show is very strong—great shots and vivid colors set the mood well, but the special effects the show utilizes are comical at best. The first episode features Amsterdam standing in a field which gradually becomes the bustling New York of today. This could have been a great moment, but it comes off looking computer-generated rather than authentic.

New Amsterdam has its kinks, but it also has the potential to be an engaging show. Hopefully, future episodes will focus more on the characters and their relationships and less on the detective aspect—if the homicides don’t get more engaging, viewers may leave this show in the morgue.