"New Amsterdam" - sounds interesting (even if it is on Fox)

[question everything]

From the WSJ:

To Die for Love
By NANCY DEWOLF SMITH
February 29, 2008; Page W6

"New Amsterdam," a Fox drama set in New York over a period of some 400 years, is getting a great send-off. The first two episodes, on Tuesday and Thursday from 9-10 p.m. ET (before moving on March 10 to Mondays from 9-10), will come on after "American Idol." Most actors in a series would die for a lead-in like that. The hook for "New Amsterdam," however, is that its hero, John Amsterdam (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), can't die. As a Dutch soldier in 1642, he was fatally pierced with a sword while defending an Indian maiden in the colony that was to become New York City. Her return gift to him was a magical breath of smoke that conveyed immortality, until -- can't you guess? -- he finds his true love.

As hokey as this may sound, it gives the series a huge range for invention. Although most of the action is set in the present, where John Amsterdam is now a homicide detective, his knowledge of things past opens the door for flashbacks to earlier eras. In the first episode, for instance, paint mixed with gold-leaf under the nails of a murder victim leads us back to the 1930s, when our detective was courting the artist who made the concoction. When he finally finds her in the present, the contrast between the former lovers, her face ravaged by age and his still fresh, is unexpectedly poignant.

(snip)

Yet things are about to change even for our hero. Chasing a suspect on a contemporary New York subway platform, he sees a stream of women getting off a train and falls to the platform unconscious. One of those women has begun in him the process of physical decay. But which one -- and do we want him to find his soul mate even if it means the first step on an inevitable path to death?

(snip)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425231669301875.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal (subscription)