New TV series featuring an immortal detective

I heard about a new TV series on Fox featured a Immortal detective for a hero. Yay Immortals! I love 'em . And this particular Immortal - Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - is gorgeous. I just had to check it out!

The show's called New Amsterdam. John Amsterdam was a soldier in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. In 1642, he saved the life of a Native American girl on Manhattan island. She rewarded him by saving his life, and granting him immortality - until he finds his one true love, at which time he can resume a normal life.

John Amsterdam is now a NYPD homicide detective because 350+ years of life has given him an obsession with death. His vast life experience (looks like this guy could take on Fox Mulder in a game of Trivial Pursuit) helps him crack the toughest cases. But what JA really wants to do is age, and eventually die. He can't do that until he finds his soul mate.

Then he's chasing a murder suspect in a subway station and suffers what seems to be a heart attack and collapses. Immediately, three or four gorgeous thirty-something women rush over. I guess they all said to themselves - whoa! hot guy down! gotta help!

After being pronounced dead at the hospital (by the hot female doctor who tried to save him in the subway - could she be The One?) John skips out of the hospital morgue, leaving the docs scratching their heads about the missing corpse.

He goes on to solve his homicide case - with the help of an old (very old) lover and some handy lip-reading skills. In his spare time, he attends an AA meeting, makes furniture, and takes pictures of NYC for his 100+ year NYC photo montage collection.

His only friend is - ironically, given he's a recovering alcoholic - a friendly bartender who knows all about the immortality thing. John tells him The One is near, because the Native American woman who saved his life told him he'd feel his true love in his heart when his soul mate finally approached. Detective Amsterdam ends the show perusing surveillance tapes of his subway heart attack, looking for the clue that will let him die.

As he tells his bartender friend when asked why he's so eager to die - "To be human is to die. To die is what makes life worth living." Which is kinda cool, because I just turned in Immortals: The Crossing, in which my Immortal demigod hero voices pretty much the same sentiment.

An intriguing start to the series! John Amsterdam is detective, artist, psychologist, mystic - and a very interesting character. Not sure why one of the show's trailers tried so hard to make him out to be an arrogant jerk - there's an early scene in the show when he meets his new female partner (could SHE be The One?) and he does his level best to make her hate him. Why?

It made no sense, because five minutes later he was busy being nice to her, and to everyone else he cames in contact with, like some New Age guru. I was happy Amsterdam brushed the chip off his shoulder quickly, because I don't generally have too much patience for characters in books or film (or in real life) who are sarcastic and rude to people for no reason. I would hope someone who's been around for almost four centuries would actually be an adult by now.

I'll definitely tune in next week, hoping John Amsterdam comes face to face with the pretty doctor, still in shock about the missing corpse. She's in for a shock when she sees it walking toward her, I think!

All the best,

Joy