Cross tries to breathe new life into James Patterson’s long-running hero

James Patterson first introduced Alex Cross in his 1993 novel Along Came A Spider. Since then, the thriller writer has published more than thirty books featuring the Black D.C. detective that have sold millions of copies around the world. And even after three big-screen outings (two featuring Morgan Freeman and one led by Tyler Perry), Patterson’s famed psychologist-turned-cop is arriving in a form perhaps best suited for his plots: the TV procedural. Consisting of eight episodes, Prime Video’s Cross stars Aldis Hodge as the title character and, despite relying on a decades-old figure, tries to breathe new life into the serial killer genre with varying degrees of success.  

Critically, the response to that 1993 novel was mixed at best. The New York Times unfavorably compared it to Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter books (“Mr. Patterson’s story manipulations lack the steel-belted logic of Mr. Harris’s literary architecture,” the review read), while Publisher’s Weekly, echoing that sentiment, suggested the entire plot was too ludicrous: “If a contemporary would-be nail-biter is to thrill as it should, it urgently needs stronger connections to reality than this book has.” Developed by Ben Watkins (a writer and executive producer on Burn Notice and Hand Of God), Cross aims to anchor Patterson’s famed hero in the reality that had once eluded the best-selling writer. And yet those comparisons to Harris remain, for the serial-killer storyline Cross outlines feels derivative and mostly unsatisfying.

For, on the surface, Cross is about how a detective still grieving his wife’s murder dives deep into a case that has him uncovering a most unusual serial killer. (Aren’t they all, though?) Yet given that the show opens with the death of a beloved felon-turned-community-activist, Cross wants to wade into thorny discussions about what it means for a Black man like Cross to be part of the D.C. police, all while being used as good press (or a good cover) by the white brass above him. Add in an ongoing stalker who’s slowly spooking Cross’ two young kids and his nana mama (the grandma who raised him and is now helping him around the house, played by Juanita Jennings) and you have an ambitious if unwieldy series struck between two wildly different genres.

Which is to say that Cross feels like a bifurcated project. It wants to exist in the world Patterson created where the brilliant mind of Cross is always up against by killers who think they can outsmart him (think Sherlock or Hannibal), all while trying to tell a story about a Black cop in D.C. that doesn’t shy away from current BLM/Defund The Police conversations (think The Wire or We Own This City). As Cross and his partner Detective John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa) start to piece together how the death of a young Black man may not be as open and shut of a case as the city would like it to be, the show gets pulled into an increasingly deranged scenario where impunity looks to be the name of the game. 

Cross, of course, is similarly pulled in different directions. As the poster boy for the D.C. Police Department, he’s long had to navigate how he moves through the world as a Black cop, especially one tasked with investigating what looks like a drug overdose (another instance of a Black youth gone astray). He’s pitted, at times, against his own community, organizers, and activists who openly defy him and call him out for trying to work within a system that would otherwise discard him if it weren’t for his badge. Such tension is promising at the beginning of the series since it feels so ripe for dissection and discussion. But soon enough, Cross’ personal woes and the respectability politics they risk unsettling (will his anger get the best of him as the killer keeps taunting him?) become mere backdrop to yet another story of a brilliant profiler trying to hunt down an equally brilliant serial killer on the loose. 

Above all else, though, this is a showcase for Hodge. The Straight Outta Compton and Underground star relishes in giving texture to Cross, a man wounded by grief and vexed by a moral clarity that’s often lacking in those around him. But it’s in the moments when Cross wavers from his good intentions—when he’s goaded into revealing his baser emotions or losing his cool—that Hodge really makes Cross sing (even when the dialogue can be wooden and expository). Indeed, given that so much of what makes Cross brilliant is the way he can see what others miss, Hodge is left needing to tell rather than show. Thankfully he’s surrounded by an equally capable cast (including Schitt’s Creek’s Karen Robinson, The Blacklist’s Ryan Eggold, as well as Sharon Taylor and Samantha Walkes) that colors in the rank, rotting world of D.C. politics that orbits Cross. For the D.C. that Cross depicts is one where no one can be trusted, where self-serving favors are all that bind folks together. That’s also what makes Alex’s family life, and his budding romance with a woman leading a nonprofit, feel all the more poignant and telling.

Cross’ attempt to both create and critique a TV police procedural that offers a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase between killer and cop comes up short. But that’s not for lack of ambition. Sure, some of its plot twists are decidedly preposterous. And some of its narrative hinges feel all too conveniently set up. But ultimately, there is plenty to enjoy in Prime Video’s reimagining of Patterson’s long-running hero, even as he’s clearly ill at ease facing a brutal vision of 21st century policing (and a TV landscape to match). 

Cross premieres November 14 on Prime Video