Ballard Review: Leading the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold-case division, Detective Renée Ballard tackles the city’s most challenging and long-forgotten crimes while facing bureaucratic tension. However, in the midst of this, she uncovers a dangerous conspiracy in the LAPD itself.
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Ballard Prime Video Cast
Maggie Q, Titus Welliver, Courtney Taylor, John Carroll Lynch, Michael Mosley, Rebecca Field, Victoria Moroles, Amy Hill, Ricardo Chavira, Noah Bean, Alain Uy, Hector Hugo
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Ballard 2025 Directors
Patrick Cady, Jet Wilkinson, Sarah Boyd, Tori Garrett, Jon Huertas, Logan Kibens, Nefertite Nguvu
The series is based on Michael Connelly’s novels and exists in the Bosch universe. Consisting of 10 episodes, each episode has a runtime of around 45 minutes.
Ballard Review
In Prime Video’s Ballad, all the characters are struggling with their personal and professional struggles as they race against time to solve cold cases that were otherwise forgotten. This is a crime-drama series that takes 10 episodes to tell its tale, and at 45 minutes, it feels far too time-consuming to be truly entertaining and gets on your nerves sometimes.
The series follows Detective Renée Ballard, who, trying to overcome her personal issues, tries her best to solve some unsolvable cases. Ballard’s relationship with her colleagues creates the bedrock for the series, and their collective arcs are interesting and entertaining to watch. Everyone battles their own demons, but somewhere down the line, they share these traumas as well. A big part of the series is the LAPD’s shortcomings and the criminality that exists throughout the ranks. We see some of it within the first few episodes itself and it makes for an entertaining twist.
Ballard and these unscrupulous people are constantly battling against each other, although she doesn’t get to know it at first. It definitely makes for a fun watch, and viewers will get a kick out of it. On top of that, the series does a great job with the cases as well and some of its complexities. The way the series moves from one clue to the next and how these cases are all connected in one way or another will keep viewers invested for most of the time.
That being said, the series gets annoying sometimes because it takes too long to get to the point. For 10 long episodes, storylines are repeated, and unnecessary problems crop up that will make you want to jump to the next scene. Sometimes the series drags because the twist is quite obvious and works on expected outcomes. However, the series looks fantastic, and its downsides aren’t bad enough to make you skip it.
However, Maggie Q is great as the protagonist and makes for a memorable detective. She’s vulnerable yet strong-willed, and you need such a realistic character to take you through the deadly avenues of the criminal underworld. I also enjoyed watching the other characters, who, although flawed, have something good going for them. I will not be discussing the antagonist’s plot, because, you know, spoilers, but it’s entertaining to watch them weasel their way into the cold case unit’s investigation.
Final Thoughts
Existing in the Bosch universe, this Prime Video series isn’t quite the icon that its predecessor was. However, it’s definitely entertaining and will make you binge for most of its runtime. There are some downtimes, but it doesn’t take too much away from the experience.
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