Ballard Review – Excellent Crime Drama, Binge-Worthy Spin Off, Entertaining

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Category: Streaming, Cable

Published on Wednesday, 09 July 2025 10:39

Written by Janet Walker

Ballard, from Prime, presents a Bosch spin-off that introduces shunned detective Renee Ballard, now regulated to basement and a newly formed cold case division, along with a unique group of volunteers who set out to bring solve the unsolvable.

Told over ten episodes, and set in Los Angeles, Renee Ballard, played by Maggie Q, begins where the last season of Bosch ended. She is now head of the Los Angeles cold case division, and given a limited budget, a few volunteers, and tasked with solving a decades old murder of the sister of a local councilmember, Jake Pearlman, played by Noah Bean.

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As the team, which includes John Carroll Lynch as Thomas Laffont, Michael Mosley as Ted Rawls, Rebecca Field as Colleen Hatteras, Victoria Moroles as Martina Castro, and Courtney Taylor as Samira Parker, begins to dig through the past and search for any witnesses that may still be alive and have some recollection of the events, the continue to fight through LAPD bureaucracy to secure the evidence recovered from the home of the Pearlman's sister, Sarah, played by Emily Czajowski.

Once they begin to pull back the layers, the find one piece of evidence that is out of place, and from there they begin to uncover the possibility of even more victims, that all appeared as a single murder, as the signature appears to connect a dozen other women, in addition to the council-member's sister. The killer's method seems to remains a mystery. With only a single touch DNA sample, recovered at one scene, connecting the killer of a Caucasian female to the killer who may be killing woman of all races creates an entirely new problem for the cold case team.

Ballard weaves in Bosch cast members, Titus Welliver, as Harry Bosch, Mimi Rogers, as D.A. Honey Chandler, and Stephan A. Chang as Bosch assistant Mo, which adds a familiarity value to the series.

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As Ballard and her team tackle LA's most challenging unsolved cases, driven by empathy and a relentless pursuit of justice, her unit is compromised, and she becomes targeted for reporting her old partner, Robert Olivas, played by Ricardo Chavira, for attempted rape. Her cold case reassignment, which was meant to cause her to quit the force, has become the motivation for her to blow up the blue wall that harbors its own.

As she peels back layers of crime spanning decades, Ballard finds herself in a high-stakes race against time, confronting both the ghosts of victims past and the very real dangers of the present. As the cases evolve they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job no matter what the department throws at her.

Ballard is an exciting spin-off, and weaves in familiar characters from its predecessor. With fast action, and images of California's coastline, Ballard is an inviting and mesmerizing action-packed series.

Ballard is streaming now on Prime. See it.

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Country: U.S.

Language: English.

Runtime: 10 episodes.

Director: Sarah Boyd, Patrick Cady, Jet Wilkinson, Tori Garrett, Jon Huertas, Logan Kibens, Nefertite Nguvu.

Producer: Phillip Rosheim.

Executive Producer: Michael Alaimo, Melissa Aouate, Henrik Bastin, Michael Connelly, Trish Hofmann, Kendall Sherwood, Jet Wilkinson.

Cast: Maggie Q, John Carroll Lynch, Titus Welliver, Mimi Rogers, Michael Mosley, Stephen A. Chang. Kevin Dunn, Rebecca Field, Victoria Moroles, Amy Hill, Courtney Taylor, Michael, Noah Bean, Ricardo Chavira, Hector Hugo, Alain Uy, Colin McCalla, Emily Czajowski, Michole Briana White.

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays, "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has completed the non-fiction narrative, "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," and is available on Amazon. "Days, Times, Seasons, Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," will be available by August 1, 2025. She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a former member of the International Federation of Journalists.