Fantasy 'New Amsterdam' casts its spell
John Amsterdam, a sexy, smart detective, knows more than he should.
That's because he has lived so much longer than most — about four centuries longer.
Amsterdam had been a Dutch soldier in the colony of New Amsterdam. He saved an American Indian girl, and in turn, a shaman saved him, casting a potent spell of immortality — at least until he finds his true soul mate. And so, John (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, "Black Hawk Down") lives in Manhattan as it transforms from that woodland island bought for trinkets to today's metropolis in Fox's "New Amsterdam," premiering at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Channel 9.
In both eras, different murder mysteries are solved, and each is a fine police whodunit. Amsterdam hints about his varied past, and every so often a keen listener questions him. When he's at an AA meeting and mentions he's been sober for 16,495 days, a guy says he can do the math and that would have ended his drinking days in the 1960s. Amsterdam acknowledges that he looks younger than he is.
It's those sly lines, without Coster-Waldau ever winking to the audience, that makes this a lot of fun. The history is also interesting, and Amsterdam's hobby of photographing Times Square over the years results in a terrific wall of photos.
In the pilot, Amsterdam dies, gets toe-tagged at a hospital and comes around on a gurney in the morgue. "All of it gets very old, except me," he says as he throws off the sheet covering what's supposed to be his corpse.
He goes on to investigate the case of a woman found dead in her apartment and immediately knows she's no typical working girl. Her perfume contains heliotrope, and he recognizes the scent because turn-of-the-century actress Sarah Bernhardt wore it.
When he and partner Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson, "Rome") approach a bar to question people, he mentions this place had the same name when it was a speakeasy. Yet she doesn't seem that surprised, nor is one of his fellow cops when it is learned Amsterdam's favorite Yankee pitcher was Red Ruffing, who played from 1924 to 1947.
"No one will ever believe you," Coster-Waldau says from his Denmark home. "He has tried telling the truth a number of times over the 400 years; it's a difficult sell. Only Omar knows."
Omar (Stephen Henderson, "Law & Order") is the cool confidant who owns the jazz bar in the building where Amsterdam lives. In Thursday's episode, we learn how John and Omar are connected, but that intriguing tidbit will not be revealed here.
"What makes it plausible for me is the human relationships," says Henderson from Buffalo, N.Y., where he is a college professor. "He has a dilemma. John really is in quite a fix. Nikolaj makes it work because you really do see he is a troubled person, and that is why playing Omar for me is such a joy because I have such empathy for him, and I am tied to him."
The show, which could easily slip into a cliched sci-fi mess as it fades into flashbacks of John's past, is instead delightfully grounded. The history works, the sets are believable, and John is as credible as an attorney in the 1940s — which he portrays in Thursday's episode — as he is as a cop in 2008.
"When I first heard about the premise, I thought it was a little strange," Coster-Waldau says. "Then I read the script. I really liked it. I was taken back by how interesting I thought it was. It's very well written, just the whole nature of the way the series uses history, the way history repeats itself, the back stories inform the present stories."
Sometimes he is John Amsterdam, other times, John York. An upcoming episode shows how in his past he was a painter who just signed his paintings "Dutch."
"Part of the pleasure of this idea," says David Manson, an executive producer and writer, "for us as writers, was the notion of being able to dramatize a character and be able to go back into the past and exploring the notion that the past is prologue. Or how does the past impinge on the present, a character who lives viscerally in the past and the present? We wanted to push away from him as a superhero. Obviously that he has lived 400 years pushes him into fantasy. His skills come out of him, having lived this incredibly rich life over the time and has had many careers and professions and skills, his talents are still rooted in something."
"He still has curiosity," Coster-Waldau says of his character. "He is still interested in life around him and wants to do his job well. Also he is just so lonely beyond comprehension."
Looking for his one true love all these centuries and thinking he has come close, takes its toll. Yet Amsterdam seeks love more than most because it will eventually free him. But not before some interesting tales.
