Not constantly empirically right, however better than the tasteless title and awful beginning sequence would possibly lead you to suspect, ABC’s Will Trent quickly emerges as an above-common broadcast TV procedural — even if it’s exactly those structural trappings that so frequently undermine it.
As middlebrow famous lit variations pass, Will Trent can provide a unique foremost character and main performances, a promising ensemble and — based off the primary two episodes — it seems without problems capable of attractive to the identical target audience that observed consolation in Netflix’s Lincoln Lawyer and Amazon’s Reacher.Named with the identical approach that gave us Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector on NBC for more than one months lower back in 2020, Will Trent is primarily based on a long-going for walks series of Atlanta-set novels by using Karin Slaughter — a reality that present lovers likely still could have deduced with a extra brilliant title. Surely the cutting-edge title is the least brilliant imaginable, and it shortchanges Trent himself, an endearingly quirky, apparently damaged unique agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Will (Ramón Rodriguez) is one of those archetypal Holmesian investigators who virtually sees the world in a different way. His secret gifts — observational and no longer via-the-e book due to the fact, as we speedy examine, Will is dyslexic — were honed in a rough formative years in the Atlanta foster care gadget and numerous group homes.
The series, tailored through Liz Heldens and Daniel T. Thomsen, begins with Will dealing with blowback from his role in orchestrating a main police corruption probe. Since the GBI and APD proportion an office building, Will is constantly compelled into touch with those who think he’s a rat or a snitch, which gets even harder while he’s known as in on a major case that requires departmental cooperation.
The case entails a mother (Jennifer Morrison), who returns to her ritzy suburban domestic, thinks she unearths her teenage daughter murdered and, in a battle, kills the man she thinks became the culprit. APD makes a decision it’s an easy solve, however Will uses his superpower — like such a lot of Sherlockian gumshoes, it’s illustrated normally with quite a few squinting — to choose holes in what regarded obvious, tons to all people’s chagrin. Soon he’s handling the sufferer’s boorish father (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), who is aware of Will from a shared beyond, a grouchy boss (Sonja Sohn’s Amanda) and a reluctant new APD partner (Iantha Richardson’s Faith), whose grudge with Will is personal.Off to the aspect, but swiftly interacting with the main case, are undercover vice detective Angie (Erika Christensen), a convalescing addict and any other piece of Will’s stressful past; and her new accomplice Michael (Jake McLaughlin), who comes across as a bit of an ass, however reputedly has a high case clearance rate, so we’re supposed to take him as a capable paintings-in-development as opposed to as some thing like a bad cop.
The overqualified presences of a uncooked Morrison and an expertly blustery and bullying Gosselaar construct instant funding and made me wish that the primary case could have probable been stretched across a complete season, rather than speeding to a end through the quit of the second hour. That’s how the cable model of the series obviously might have played out, and I actually have worries that Will Trent would possibly transition to a case-of-the-week shape, possibly exemplified by way of the thoroughly unengaging B-case inside the 2d hour. Giving the entirety more room to respire should have alleviated a number of the demanding situations in explaining the GBI’s jurisdiction and how it, and Will, healthy into the Atlanta regulation enforcement scene. But at least the overall depiction of Atlanta is nicely treated, and the spreading of Will’s initial case over two episodes offers some hazard for character information to emerge.
