Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector (Fridays at 8:00pm on NBC; Premieres January 10)
With Lincoln Rhyme, we can see NBC trying to jumpstart a new police procedural while also trying to bank on the recent success on cable and streaming of serialized crime dramas (see: Mindhunter, Unbelievable, Bosch, True Detective) and anthologies (American Horror Story, The Haunting, American Crime Story). It's got procedural elements to feel familiar to casual and older audiences, but the overlong, borderline-absurd title also makes it clear that this is a series that could continue with a central character into multiple seasons with a new story each year (which is essentially what Bosch, also based on a series of popular crime novels by Michael Connelly, does on Amazon Prime) based on a new Jeffrey Deaver book.
But in trying to be so many things, Lincoln Rhyme never really does very well at any one thing.
The second adaptation of the first novel by Deaver to feature quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme, Hunt for the Bone Collector begins with our hero attempting to outsmart a criminal who's kidnapped a man and strapped him to a bomb. Rhyme figures the clues out and disarms the bomb, but not before the Bone Collector pulls the rug, quite literally, out from under him and Rhyme falls two stories onto a pile of bricks and the kidnapped man dies. Three years later, NYPD detective and FBI-hopeful Amelia Sachs (Arielle Kebbel, Midnight, Texas) discovers a posed body on the subway tracks which gains the attention of Rhyme, now a criminologist working from home in between playing video games. Convinced the Bone Collector has a copycat, Rhyme assembles a forensics team to find the next victims before they perish.
There's a whole lot going on in this pilot, and it comes at a breakneck pace. We're constantly flashing between crime scenes and chases and shootouts, and everyone talks at the speed of light, as if they're trying to fit a normally-paced 60-minute episode into a broadcast-standard 42-44 minutes. So one thing Lincoln Rhyme never is? Boring.
Unfortunately that's one of very few positives here. The other is Kebbel, who does gritty pretty well, even though she has to deliver her entire character history via some awkward exposition about mental illness. But she's one of the few characters who gets to show emotion, and that works in her favor in an otherwise action-packed hour.
The biggest obstacle here is that there's just nothing new or interesting going on. Sitcom veteran director Seth Gordon (Marry Me, Breaking In) pulls individual moments and inspiration from various sources, from Elementary to The Blacklist. He also makes some questionable tonal decisions, such as when Rhyme is thinking through clues, we see animated graphics of his thought process. It makes an otherwise bleak, gritty cop show feel silly (not to mention how distracting they can be). They really have no place in a serious drama, which is what I think this show wants to be. The color palate, content, and memories of the R-rated Denzel Washington film that predated the series all point toward Lincoln Rhyme wanting to be dark and grimy despite its family-friendly timeslot and network.
I don't know if an HBO or Netflix-esque cop show could be successful on NBC. The limits of broadcast television might be too much to overcome, both because the content cannot be fully realistic and disturbing, but the pacing of premium cable/streaming is so different from broadcast. The way we consume programming on networks like HBO or Netflix is totally different from how we consume programming on NBC or CBS, so a cop show like Lincoln Rhyme can only either be what it wants to be or satisfy its audience. I don't know if it's possible to do both and be a success, and if it is, we just haven't seen an example of that yet.
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