MGM+ today released the first images from Bosch: Start of Watch, a prequel that follows Michael Connelly's detective Harry Bosch as a 26-year-old rookie police officer in 1992 Los Angeles, and set the eight-episode series to premiere on Sunday, January 10, 2027. Two episodes arrive on the opening night, followed by one a week until the finale on Sunday, February 21, 2027, according to Amazon MGM Studios. Cameron Monaghan, known for Shameless and Gotham, plays Bosch. Omari Hardwick, whose credits include Star Trek: Section 31 and Army of the Dead, plays the veteran officer Eli Bridges. The series will stream on MGM+ in the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Latin America.

Pulse

Amazon's MGM+ streaming service will start a new Bosch series, about the detective's first days as a young police officer, on January 10, 2027, and show the last of its eight episodes on February 21. Earlier Bosch shows stream on Prime Video, which runs ads by default, and one of them began on Amazon's free, ad-supported Freevee service, but MGM+ is a paid service without ads, so this one reaches only people who subscribe. For advertisers, the newest chapter of one of Amazon's best-known crime franchises will carry no ad breaks to buy.

What MGM+ released today

The announcement went out on Amazon MGM Studios' press site under a Culver City, California dateline, with a subtitle stating that the "Prequel Series Premieres Sunday, January 10, 2027 in MGM+ Territories Worldwide." A press site with first-look images sits alongside it. One of the stills shows two uniformed officers beside a black-and-white patrol car, its light bar red and blue, parked at the bottom of a concrete flood channel beneath a road bridge. The announcement does not say which actors appear in the frame.

The series page on the same site lists the show as Season 1, gives a launch date of January 10, 2027, and adds a detail the announcement leaves out: the directors, Stephen Kay and Sharat Raju. Today's first look comes 73 days before the premiere, by PPC Land's count.

Neither the announcement nor the series page mentions price, advertising or how the series will be billed to viewers. Both describe the show as an MGM+ title. Neither carries a statement from an executive at MGM+ or Amazon MGM Studios; the only line in quotation marks is the character's own motto.

A rookie in 1992

The premise is set out in a single paragraph that appears, word for word, in both the announcement and the series page. "Based on Michael Connelly's best-selling book series that also spawned Prime Video's hit franchise, Bosch: Start of Watch takes viewers back to 1992 Los Angeles, following 26-year-old Harry Bosch during his earliest days as a rookie cop," according to Amazon MGM Studios.

The city, in the studio's description, is "a city on the edge, teeming with racial tension, gang violence, and a fractured LAPD." Amid routine calls and growing unrest, Bosch is drawn into a high-profile heist and a web of criminal corruption that "will test his loyalty to the badge and shape his future as the detective who lives by the code, 'Everybody counts or nobody counts.'"

That year carries weight in the city's history. The Los Angeles riots began on April 29, 1992, after a jury acquitted four LAPD officers in the beating of Rodney King. The studio's description speaks of "racial tension" and "growing unrest" without naming those events, and the announcement does not say whether the series depicts them or in which months of 1992 the story takes place.

The title borrows police vocabulary. In LAPD usage a watch is a shift, so start of watch marks the moment an officer goes on duty. The earlier series followed the same character to his retirement from the LAPD.

The cast

Monaghan and Hardwick lead a cast of 14 names on the series page. Two further actors are listed as series regulars in the announcement: Ariana Guerra as Rosa and JD Pardo as Cory. Neither character is given a surname or a role description.

Ten more actors "also appear in the eight-episode series," according to the announcement: Kathleen Wilhoite, William Fichtner, Rafi Gavron, Raphael Sbarge, Azita Ghanizada, Kenneth Miller, Seamus Dever, Ryan McPartlin, Marco Rodriguez and Shelli Boone. The announcement does not name the characters they play or say how many episodes each appears in.

The top of the bill pairs a rookie with a seasoned officer. Bridges is described only as a "veteran officer," and the announcement says nothing more about the relationship between the two men.

Who made it

Fabel Entertainment produces the series. Tom Bernardo and Brian Anthony co-created it and serve as executive producers, with Bernardo as showrunner. The remaining executive producers are Michael Connelly, Henrik Bastin, Jamie Boscardin Martin, Stephen Kay and Jasmine Russ, which makes seven executive producers in total on the series page.

Two co-executive producers appear only in the announcement. Mark Douglas is one. Theresa Snider is the other, credited as serving "for Hieronymus Pictures" - a company name that echoes the character's full first name, Hieronymus. Connelly's own executive producer credit ties the prequel directly to the author of the novels.

Kay holds two roles: executive producer and, according to the series page, one of the two directors alongside Sharat Raju. Which episodes each directed is not stated.

Eight episodes over six weeks

The announcement gives the opening date, the two-episode premiere, the weekly cadence and the finale date. From those four facts the full schedule can be worked out. The individual dates below are PPC Land's calculation, not Amazon's listing:

  • Sunday, January 10, 2027 - episodes one and two
  • Sunday, January 17 - episode three
  • Sunday, January 24 - episode four
  • Sunday, January 31 - episode five
  • Sunday, February 7 - episode six
  • Sunday, February 14 - episode seven
  • Sunday, February 21 - episode eight, the finale

The arithmetic holds. Two episodes on the first Sunday plus six weekly releases make eight, and the sixth weekly release lands exactly on February 21, 42 days after the premiere. The announcement does not give a release hour, episode titles or running times.

That pattern differs from how Amazon has handled two recent Prime Video series. Prime Video put all eight episodes of The Terminal List's second season online at once on October 21, 2026, in more than 240 countries and territories. For the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon chose three batches, with four episodes on November 11 and the final two on November 25. A weekly Sunday run keeps a title in the schedule for six weeks instead. For a viewer paying month to month who signs up on premiere night, the finale falls after the first renewal date - a point about subscription billing, not a claim from MGM+.

Nine markets, not 240

The territory list is the same in the announcement and on the series page, if in a different order: the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Latin America. That is eight countries and one region. Neither names the Latin American countries covered. The subtitle's reference to "MGM+ Territories Worldwide" describes the scope as MGM+'s own footprint rather than a global release, and markets such as France, Canada and Australia do not appear.

The franchise's previous chapter reached far more markets. The third and final season of Bosch: Legacy premiered on March 27, 2025 in more than 240 countries and territories, exclusively on Prime Video, according to Amazon. Amazon said at the time that the 10-episode season would bring the longest-running franchise on Prime Video to a close, with a finale on April 17, 2025. The story continued anyway: Ballard, a spin-off of Bosch: Legacy, released all 10 episodes of its first season on Prime Video on July 9, 2025, according to Amazon. Start of Watch takes the title character to a service with a far smaller map: MGM+ is offered in more than 30 countries, according to Amazon.

From Freevee to a subscription wall

The route the franchise has taken across Amazon's services tracks the company's shifting approach to advertising in streaming.

The announcement credits Connelly's novels with spawning "Prime Video's hit franchise," and the original Bosch series ran on Prime Video. Its successor, Bosch: Legacy, launched on Freevee, Amazon's free ad-supported service. PPC Land listed Bosch: Legacy among Freevee's notable originals when Amazon said on November 12, 2024 that it would phase out Freevee and fold its content into Prime Video. Freevee had launched in January 2019 as IMDb Freedive. The final season of Bosch: Legacy then premiered on Prime Video in March 2025.

By then, Prime Video itself carried ads. Amazon introduced ads to Prime Video in January 2024, moving members onto the ad-supported tier by default and charging $2.99 a month to remove them. From April 10, 2026, that add-on was replaced in the United States by Prime Video Ultra at $4.99 a month, a 67% increase. Amazon reported an average ad-supported audience of 315 million viewers globally and $21.3 billion in fourth-quarter 2025 advertising revenue, up from the 200 million viewers it disclosed in April 2024.

Start of Watch goes elsewhere. MGM+ is the premium network that relaunched from Epix in January 2023, and Amazon describes it on its consumer page as ad-free. It costs $7.99 a month or $61.99 a year in the United States and can be bought on its own or added as a channel inside Prime Video. MGM+ came to Amazon with MGM, which Amazon bought for $8.5 billion in a deal that closed in March 2022.

Put in industry terms, the Bosch franchise has passed from an AVOD service (Freevee), through a hybrid one (Prime Video with ads on by default), to an SVOD one (MGM+). Neither the announcement nor the series page explains why the prequel was placed on MGM+ rather than in Prime Video's own catalogue.

What changes for advertisers

The practical effect is narrow but concrete. The franchise's existing seasons stream on Prime Video, which Amazon said in early 2025 held every season of Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, and Prime Video serves ads by default. Those titles stay part of the inventory Amazon sells in the connected TV market. The new series does not join them. On an ad-free service, an episode of Start of Watch produces no ad impressions.

That gap shows up in reporting tools. Since August 6, 2024, Amazon has offered advertisers show-title reports that break streaming TV ad impressions down by show, covering Prime Video and, at the time, Freevee. An episode of Start of Watch on MGM+ will not appear in them, because there is no ad load to report.

Whether Amazon intends the series to move to Prime Video's main catalogue later, and on what timetable, is not addressed in the announcement.

The announcement lists @MGMPlus and @MGMPlusUK as the service's official accounts on Instagram, TikTok and X, with a separate UK handle for one of the nine markets.

What the announcement does not say

Several details that usually accompany a premiere announcement are missing. Neither the announcement nor the series page gives a price or refers to ads; the ad-free status comes from Amazon's consumer page for MGM+. There is no premiere hour, no episode titles and no running times. The Latin American countries are not listed. Ten of the 14 cast members have no character names. Directors are named on the series page but not in the announcement, and co-executive producers appear in the announcement but not on the series page. No trailer is mentioned, and no executive is quoted. Nor does the announcement state whether the nine listed markets are the full extent of the "MGM+ Territories Worldwide" in its subtitle.

Timeline

Summary

Who: MGM+, the Amazon-owned subscription service, and Amazon MGM Studios; producer Fabel Entertainment; co-creators Tom Bernardo, who is also showrunner, and Brian Anthony; author Michael Connelly as executive producer; and a cast led by Cameron Monaghan as Harry Bosch and Omari Hardwick as Eli Bridges.

What: Bosch: Start of Watch, an eight-episode prequel following a 26-year-old Harry Bosch as a rookie in a Los Angeles of racial tension, gang violence and a fractured LAPD, drawn into a heist and a web of corruption. MGM+ released first-look images and the release schedule.

When: The first look was released today. The series premieres with two episodes on Sunday, January 10, 2027 and runs weekly to the finale on Sunday, February 21, 2027.

Where: On MGM+ in the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Latin America. The story is set in Los Angeles in 1992.

Why: Amazon is extending one of its longest-running streaming franchises with a prequel, and it has placed that prequel on MGM+, an ad-free service with a smaller footprint, rather than in Prime Video's own catalogue, where earlier Bosch seasons sit in the ad-supported inventory Amazon sells to advertisers.