He's seen it all, but we haven't

I want to like "New Amsterdam," I do, I do, I do. The idea of a homicide detective who is really a Dutch colonist/soldier granted immortality by the witchy native girl whose life he saved in 1642? Catnip to a history-geek girl with a predilection for brooding, troubled men and novels in which Sherlock Holmes runs into Sigmund Freud or Edgar Allan Poe. (Do you hear me, fellow devotees of "House," "Life" and "In Treatment"?)

Oh, the wisdom such a man would have, the issues he would face -- loss, loneliness, a real New Yorker's outrage over the dandification of Times Square. The artists he could have met, the opening nights, the ballgames, the insight into historical events he would have because he was actually there at the time. With a pilot directed by Lasse Halstrom ("Chocolat," "The Cider House Rules"), such a man, such a concept seem ripe with delicious possibility.

The show, unfortunately, is not. Played out as a cop procedural, it has a predictable narrative structure that at times resembles nothing so much as a prison. Perhaps frightened by the wackiness of a 366-year-old cop, the writers have dressed him up in cliches. John Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is the best cop in the department, a maverick, an iconoclast, a lone wolf. Or so he tells his new partner Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson), whom he doesn't expect to stick around any longer than any of the previous 157 partners he's had.

But Eva is one tough cookie (not to mention Latina, which seems to be the current choice for partners of maverick cops -- see also "Life"). She will not be scared off by Amsterdam's sudden mysterious silences, off-hours naked swims or even his almost photographic resemblance to that guy in the really old painting. When a young woman is found dead, Eva goes by the book and Amsterdam goes off the grid. You know the drill. It is not the most interesting case on record -- Angela Lansbury would have solved it in 2 1/2 minutes -- but at least Amsterdam is able to show off his special knowledge of New York and his relationship with its history, which at least promises greater things in future episodes. Oh, and in a very clever plot twist, he makes "antique" furniture in his spare time, just to keep the cash flow healthy.

No, it's not the by-the-numbers procedural or the so-familiar odd couple as cop partners that keep "New Amsterdam" from achieving greatness, or even pretty-goodness. It's the love story.