Jonathan Storm: Far-fetched only if it flops

New Amsterdam

premieres tonight on Fox after

American Idol

. It features a 399-year-old New York police detective who was spared from death by an Indian maiden in 1642 and will remain immortal (and forever gorgeous) until he meets the one true love of his life.

It's not the greatest thing since the invention of the tin can, which came along right in the middle of our hero's life, but it turns out to be much less stupid than it sounds.

Some of the best TV series start with ridiculous premises.

Lost

,

Desperate Housewives

and

24

are the most popular current far-fetched shows.

Others with crackpot presumptions attract fewer, but more fervent fans.

Medium

's Allison DuBois sees the real killers in her nightmares. The

Boston Legal

partnership is more asylum than law firm. The life-reviving powers of

Pushing Daisies

' pie-maker are so convoluted, they need an owner's manual.

All these shows succeed because their writers quickly create worlds whose very impossibility becomes normal. A few -

Lost

, for instance, or

The X-Files

- are built primarily on "mythology." Fans stick around just to see what the heck's going on. Others, like

24

or

Jericho

, put an equal emphasis on less spacey, action-driven plots.

In shows like

Boston Legal

,

Medium

and

Pushing Daisies

, the made-up world is far less interesting than the characters in it. Character and mythology melded deliciously in the best of all these series,

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

.

New Amsterdam

combines the fantasy of semi-eternal life with the more common week-to-week TV reality of a mystery detective show. And, yes, most doctor, cop and lawyer shows are absurd, too, but they don't start out admitting it.

Dane Nikolaj Coster-Waldau brings intrigue to the Dutchman whose current name is John Amsterdam. He has changed it over the years to escape undue curiosity from elderly former friends from whom he's had to disappear because they wouldn't understand why he's still thirtyish and handsome. He's also changed occupations. With everything he's learned after all this time, he makes a great police detective.

He has a not-terribly insightful but gung-ho partner named Eva, and when he's not solving cases where the least likely, and therefore perhaps the most obvious, character turns out to be the killer, he will flash back to scenes from his earlier years - early 20th century, late 18th century, whatever.

The flashing back in New York's history - the guy and the city grew up together, get it? - is integral and intriguing, too.

Like Anne Rice's vampires, Amsterdam is not exactly crazy about hanging around so long and seeing all his loved ones die, a feeling he shares with a bar owner named Omar, who seemingly is the only person who knows Amsterdam's secret. Stephen Henderson is dynamite as an aging jazz aficionado who wears hip hats and used to hang with Oscar Peterson and John Coltrane.

"Hey, let the good times roll," he responds when Amsterdam excitedly details a near-death experience at the 137th Street subway station. It means that one of the throng of women on the rush-hour platform is his one true love.

It has taken 366 years for her to turn up, and Fox would be ecstatic if it took five or six more for him to find her.

TV Review

New Amsterdam

Tonight at 9 on Fox29

Check out more on "New Amsterdam," including a video interview with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and clips from the show, at

http://go.philly.com/newamsterdam