THE WAITING IS OVER...

And as US crime writing legend Michael Connelly reveals, Titus Welliver will carry on playing his driven detective Harry Bosch in a new spin-off cop series starring Maggie Q when TV's longest-running streamer ends next year

- Matt Nixson

CRIME writing titan Michael Connelly has reassured fans Titus Welliver will continue to play his legendary detective Harry Bosch on screen, even when the longest-running streaming series in TV history concludes after its 10th season this spring.

Despite an energetic grassroots campaign to save the show, Bosch: Legacy is due to end after 11 years following a final series in March. But Welliver, 62, will continue to star as the rule-breaking cop in Connelly's as yet untitled new series featuring Maggie Q as Renée Ballard.

Based on Detective Mitzi Roberts, the recently-retired head of the LAPD's real-life volunteer Open-Unsolved unit, Ballard has shared book plotlines with Bosch since 2017's The Late Show and the pair appear together for the sixth time in Connelly's new blockbuster, The Waiting, of which more shortly. While expressing gratitude at the "very flattering" fan-led campaign to save. Bosh: Legacy, spun off after seven seasons of Amazon Prime's original Bosch series, Connelly declares: "It's very hard for me to argue with having 10 seasons of Bosch.

"Shooting the very first episode of season one, I remember asking Titus, 'If we get lucky and get five seasons, can you do five seasons?' And he replied, 'I'll do it as long as you want me'. But it turned out to be 10 seasons which is just amazing. And Titus appears in the forthcoming Ballard show just as they work together in the books.

"We didn't get the word Bosch: Legacy was not going to go on until we were well into producing Ballard but that kind of frees up some of our Bosch characters. So I think going forward there'll be some surprise appearances."

While many authors have strained relationships with cinema and television - fans of Lee Child's Jack Reacher, for example, never liked Tom Cruise's two films, though subsequently embraced Alan Ritchson in the role for TV Connelly's best-loved novels novels have enjoyed overwhelmingly positive smallscreen adaptations.