From Kindle to streamer, Amazon’s Prime Video service specializes in literary heroes we get to know on a last-name basis: Bosch. Reacher. And now Cross—as in Alex Cross, the volatile yet intuitive Washington, D.C., detective with a psychology Ph.D., popularized in James Patterson’s bestsellers for three decades.
Previously portrayed on the big screen by Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry, Cross is likely to become most indelibly identified with this latest incarnation by the formidable Aldis Hodge. Dealing with grief and anger issues, hounded by street protesters, targeted by a sinister stalker, Hodge’s widowed Cross has more than a few crosses to bear, facing each obstacle with a pugnacious attitude and a glare that could stop the craziest psycho in their tracks.
Isaiah Mustafa is a welcome and calming presence as Detective John Sampson, his childhood buddy who frequently keeps Cross from going off the rails. It’s a gift that comes in handy, because in the first season, Cross is confronted with a doozy of a madman who specializes in psychological taunts.
Though the politically ambitious police chief chides Cross that “Not every case you work is Silence of the Lambs,” even Hannibal Lecter might blanch at the macabre methods his new nemesis employs to satisfy an obsession with legendary serial killers. “More [Ted] Bundy than [Jeffrey] Dahmer,” Cross suspects in one of his many patented leaps of deduction.
Related‘Cross’ Team Talks Season 1’s Villain and Behind-the-Scenes Moments
Over eight melodramatic episodes, closer in lurid tone to Criminal Minds than a standard detective story—in other words, not for the squeamish—Cross is at its best in scenes of mind games between Hodge and a platinum-haired Ryan Eggold (New Amsterdam), hamming it up as well-connected and secretly deranged philanthropist Ed Ramsey. The show is at its most excruciating in scenes between the “Fanboy” (as the killer is nicknamed) and his latest victim (poor Eloise Mumford), who suffers gruesomely but refuses to give up without a fight.
Cross frequently crosses the line beyond improbable to incredibly insane, with a series of escalating climaxes that feel like a game of whack-the-perv. On the other hand, it’s never boring.
Cross, Series Premiere (eight episodes), Thursday, November 14, Prime Video
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