New Amsterdam - Pilot Review

Last night I was at the New York TV Festival last night for a showing of the pilot of new Fox show New Amsterdam. You may recall that I referred to it as Highlander-meets-Angel - and now I'm going to have to eat my words.

Not that Highlander's shadow can't be felt in the show - despite executive producer David Manson's assertation that he's never seen those movies or shows - but it's the good Highlander and in a good way. It echoes the first movie - because it has the inherent romance of that movie.

John Amsterdam is a man who's lived over 400 years, all of them (as far as we know) in New York - he knows the city, the people like the back of his hand - and he still enjoys it. These days he's a homicide detective but he's had other careers over the years - carpenter, jazz musician, soldier and painter to name the ones suggested in the pilot. He still loves life even if he's a little obsessed by death - "It plays hard to get".

It's his death, or the potential of it, that drives him forward. Granted immortality until he finds his soul mate thanks to a selfless act during the founding of the Dutch settlements centuries ago, Amsterdam hasn't been moping around waiting for true love like a certain brooding vampire you could mention. He's lived, loved, married, had children - always knowing that he'll leave them all behind until he finds the one.

So when he has a heart attack on a subway platform during an arrest when his soulmate steps off a train, he's understandably surprised - and happy. Now the only problem is finding out exactly which commuter she was.

Luckily for Amsterdam, it looks like she's the good samaritan doctor who rushes to his aid and later pronounces him dead in the hospital. (Personally I wonder if that's true or just a huge misdirection...)

The core performance of Danish actor Nikolaj Coster Waldau is what holds the show together. By turns cynical, funny, charming and astonished, the ridiculously charismatic Waldau resists the urge to play Amsterdam as world weary, instead turning him into a man of routine and hope. Using a decades old camera, he takes pictures of Times Square every year, mapping the city's changes from the same spot for over a hundred years - this is his city.

Waldau's supported by Zuleikha Robinson (of Rome and, amusingly, The Lone Gunmen) - who is much prettier in person - as Amsterdam's new partner, Eva Marquez. Of course, given Amsterdam's tendency to rush headlong into danger and drop facts about the city that he knows only because he experienced them years ago, she's permanently bemused by him and you can see the banter and rapport developing between them.

Stephen Henderson and Alexie Gilmore round out the cast as Omar (Amsterdam's sole confidant, a gambling, bar-owning former jazz player who has known him since the 60s) and Dr Sara Dillane (the love interest destined to kill Amsterdam). While Gilmore doesn't really get too much to do in the pilot, Henderson steals every scene he's in, whether it's selling one of Amsterdam's just completed antique table or complaining about Amsterdam's bad moods - "That was a long damn ten years!".

It's a strong cast, a witty script and a twist on the old immortals theme - Amsterdam is alone; there's no head-chopping, no swords (at least in the pilot), no cameraderie from fellow immortals. Just Amsterdam, Omar and his dog - and New York, which acts almost as a fifth cast member.

I'm going out on a limb and saying that the New Amsterdam pilot is pretty much the best pilot I've seen since Lost. Yep, better than Heroes. Where it succeeds where the Heroes pilot - and entire season, actually - for me failed is that it focuses on a small core of characters, and they're all easy to like almost immediately. It helps that I have a pre-disposition towards the Highlander-esque elements, and that I saw it with an appreciative crowd but even if I hadn't this would be on my watch-list.

If I could offer one word of advice...please don't use the fake beard and moustache from the 'origin' sequence again - because it's probably the worst I've seen ever.

Anyway, it's a damn good show and should be premiering in January - hopefully after American Idol, according to Manson. Set your watches...