3 out of 5

Created by: Ben Watkins

covers season 1 – 2

With so many genius detective TV shows out there, it’s amusing when the genius detective is, er, pretty dumb. And it’d be one thing if that was part of the character development – the genius who can wield their mighty gifts of deduction and intuition upon anyone but themselves! – but Alex Cross, in the streaming series version developed by Ben Watkins, and as played by Aldis Hodge, gets points for consistency: he’s pretty dumb across the board. Though I don’t think this is very purposeful from Watkins, or the series’ writers.

It’s also no shade on Hodge. Rather, it’s his presence on screen – alongside some great other cast members, particularly Isaiah Mustafa as his partner John Sampson – that holds this thing together. Season-long plots are similarly carried by charismatic actors who bring their all to serial killers of differing motivations (Ryan Eggold is awesome when cast as a baddy; Wes Chatham’s supporting baddy role in season 2 means we get to see more Wes Chatham, which always awesome regardless).

And top down, those season-long plots are pretty good vehicles for the behind-the-camera team to figure out Cross’ tone, with season 1 kind of cringily over-the-top with sex and violence like a noir Criminal Minds and season 2 going for a more streamlined, CBS-like “here’s some middleground messaging about rapists being bad” topicality; both of these – my snark aside – have their pluses and minuses for our entertainment.

But man, the details are dumb. Cross’ status as a superstar cop with superpowered Holmes-like recall apparently means he can let every suspect die with a whoopsie, not solve the cases until they’re solved for him, and “deduce” logical conclusions that require putting the square block through the – no, no Cross, not the triangle. You’ll get it next time. Additionally, and mainly in season 1, the show thrives on relationship drama that doesn’t track, people flip-flopping between love and disgust as though the writers couldn’t figure out who they wanted to ship and just kept trying different configurations – and maybe you’ll sense a theme there, of Maybe This Works? across the way people interact, and the cases are solved.

So why… does it work? At least enough to make it pretty bingeworthy, which it is. Well, the cast is the biggest selling point. Even when given some clunky dialogue, and trying hard to sell Cross as a tough guy when the actual writing doesn’t support it, Hodge is great, and Mustafa is arguably better – with his character given less screentime, it’s like it allowed the actor more room to fill out his character, and he carries that dimensionality into every scene. All of the supporting cop characters have a tangible camaraderie that makes the squad room a lot of fun, and – biggest score – the kid actors that play Alex’s kids (Caleb Elijah, Melody Hurd) are super cute, super not annoying, and manage some emotional heavy-lifting as well. The main on-screen relationship that I’ve criticized pairs Alex with and NPO worker named Elle, played by Samantha Walkes, and she’s great too – even as her “character arc” suffers greatly in season 2, she makes Elle into a real person.

Then you have some wildcards: I happen to think Alona Tal is great, and love seeing her in shows, but she has the unfortunate habit of being cast as the love-to-hate-her type, and she gets that here, as FBI Agent Craig. But, like, damn, people love to hate her, so she’s doing her job. And where I divide with most of the reddit crowd / reviewers is on Johnny Ray Gill’s Bobby Trey, a kind of jack-of-all-trades for either the white hats or black hats: I… kinda hate Trey’s shtick as an unmoored psycho, but I’ll admit that he brings a pretty unpredictable energy to his character that the show almost unwillingly bounces off of.

If you remove all the spice of the casting, Cross probably wouldn’t work, honestly. The main hooks of each season are good but the beat-by-beat storytelling cannot maintain tension without some glaring gaffs in logic, and that only becomes forgivable – and entertaining! – is because of how much you like seeing these people on screen.