There are many ways you’d describe Detective Harry Bosch. In the words of actor Titus Welliver, who portrays the cop in crime series Bosch, he’s “this dogged relentless detective” and “such a quintessential anti-hero”. But until now, Bosch has stayed on the right side of the law.
As he explains to The Playlist's Nick Bhasin, that changes in season three.
“Bosch isn’t a cop who would ever plant evidence on someone or beat a confession out of someone,” Welliver says. “We won’t see Bosch taking freebies from prostitutes or snorting cocaine or anything like that, but by the end of the season, you’re going to go, ‘He’s in deep.’”
In his efforts to catch a crim, he goes and above and beyond… the law.
“He places surveillance equipment in the apartment of a serial killer/rapist and also on the outside of buildings facing his building because he wants to catch this guy,” Welliver explains. “This guy has murdered and raped several women, and Bosch has been trying to get him for a long time, but that’s totally illegal.
“He’s kind of operating on his own – he goes off the reservation and is truly rogue in that way. If he was caught doing that he would certainly be permanently suspended from the police department and if you had a hard-ass DA who was dealing with the case, he could even potentially go to prison for it.”
Matters are complicated when Bosch’s target turns up dead – and the detective is the prime suspect in his murder. Could he have enacted his own brand of justice?
“He goes to a very dark place,” Welliver says. “He crosses an ethical line and the thing that’s great about Bosch is that he’s got this flawless moral compass, and yet we see that moral compass get magnetised and corrupted to a certain degree.”
Listen to the entire conversation with Titus Welliver on The Playlist here:
The latest Bosch thriller by Michael Connelly, Two Kinds of Truth, is out Monday 30 October. You can read a sample chapter and hear the author reveal his favourite thing about Harry here.
Bosch airs Thursdays at 9:30pm on SBS.
Watch the latest episode at SBS On Demand:
