BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

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It concerns one John Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a New York police detective who, thanks to his earlier incarnation defending a mystic woman some four centuries previously, has never aged and will only become mortal once he meets his soul mate.

So, while the show is essentially a rote cop drama, it also invites the producers to tell stories from John’s past, as well as pursue an epic love story. And, since John has been around long enough to know an awful lot about the city, that gives him a convenient leg up when solving crimes, putting it in the tradition of savant cop shows like “Monk,” “Numb3rs” or “Life.”

It goes without saying that “New Amsterdam” opens with our hero investigating the murder of a sexy young woman, because pretty much all cop shows open with the murder of a sexy young woman.

It also goes without saying that “New Amsterdam” opens with John bickering with his latest partner, Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson), because, again, pretty much all cop shows open with bickering partners. But early into the investigation, as Amsterdam’s about to collar a suspect, he collapses in the subway system.

He dies in a nearby hospital, then comes back to life in the morgue, and disappears under the hospital’s radar: What? He didn’t have a badge or any identification for the hospital to trace him? His colleagues didn’t hear about a detective collapsing in an incident involving guns at a crowded subway stop and being rushed to the hospital? This leads John to conclude that he must have seen the woman he has always referred to as “the one” when he passed out, and he goes about searching for her.

His longtime pal Omar (Stephen Henderson), a former jazz musician and current club owner whom Amsterdam has watched grow from a boy to an old man while retaining his own youthfulness, incredulously helps his buddy out when he can. “New Amsterdam’s” greatest asset is Coster-Waldau, who fairly credibly plays a fairly incredible character. Coster-Waldau brings a wry, understated charisma to the role.

If this isn’t the vehicle that vaults him to stardom, other producers should be at the ready to provide him the role that will. Initially, “New Amsterdam” was supposed to be on Fox’s fall schedule, but it got yanked, and its initial episode order was reduced from 13 to seven. Which hardly suggests the network has high hopes for the show. So we’re likely never to discover who John’s soul mate is, though it seems likely that the suggestion that she was in the subway when he collapsed was mere obfuscation: Why would he become mortal before  he knew he had even laid eyes upon “the one?” Deft editing in episode two suggests that, in fact, his new partner Eva is “the one.”

Legendary New York columnist Pete Hamill has groused that “New Amsterdam” sounds awfully suspiciously like his 2002 novel “Forever,” about a man who befriends a slave in 1741 and is resurrected and made immortal by a priestess, so long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan.

Hamill has a point, but his book was sort of a response to the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and a paean to New York’s eternal resiliency. Having been written so soon after the tragedy, Hamill’s book was raw and, hence, more than a little maudlin (though if anyone should’ve been given a first whack at absorbing that event, Hamill was the guy). Perhaps without realizing it, “New Amsterdam” concerns another sort of tragedy. Its protagonist is handsome, smart and witty – and he hasn’t found his true love for 400 years?

What chance does that give the rest of us?

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David Kronke, (818) 713-3638
 
david.kronke@dailynews.com

www.insidesocal.com/tv/

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>review

NEW AMSTERDAM 

What: A New York detective who has lived for centuries will become mortal only once he finds his true love.
Where: Fox Channel 11
When: 9 p.m. today and Thursday; thereafter, 9 p.m. Mondays.
In a nutshell: Both soulful and gimmicky, buoyed by a strong central performance by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

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