Theo James as Walter William Clark Jr., who in the first episode is a newly promoted homicide detective. Flashforwards reveal that in seven years, he will be the youngest police commissioner in the history of the department. In the future, he walks with a pronounced limp.
Kevin Alejandro as homicide detective Christian Arroyo, a senior detective. Owen and Arroyo have a frosty relationship after a mistake by Arroyo that resulted in an informant's death. According to flashforwards in the premiere episode, their relationship will degenerate over time; they also suggest that Arroyo's hostility to Clark's arrival will result in at least one death. He has a son who will follow in his footsteps as a police officer.
Bonnie Somerville as homicide detective Deb McKenzie, Arroyo's partner and illicit lover. She had a brother, now deceased, who was also a cop.
Stella Maeve as Agnes Clark, Walter's younger sister. She moves in with Walter during the pilot, and works at a diner near the police department.
Ron Yuan as Lt. Peter Kang, the head of the homicide squad.
Episodes
Reception
Reception for Golden Boy has typically been positive. On Metacritic, the series received "generally favorable reviews", reflected by a Metascore of 63 out of 100, based on 23 reviews. The Wall Street Journals Dorothy Rabinowitz stated the series "is packed with fine performances, but no amount of actorly talent could have done for this series what its intelligently twisty plots, its nuanced dialogue bearing a distinct resemblance to human exchange—even from the mouths of TV police detectives—has done." Alan Sepinwall of HitFix called the series "a solid, meat-and-potatoes police procedural, and one that could potentially evolve into more depending on how the flash-forwards are used down the road." Newsdays Verne Gay called it a "decent cop procedural. Period." He added: "The best stuff in Golden Boy is the little stuff—sharp, brittle dialogue, nice performances and a street cred that's a cut above average." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News stated "We quickly care what happens to these characters, which gets any show off to a strong start. Just as quickly, though, the time-jumping makes the story feel more complicated than it needs to. Golden Boy doesn't need to be framed as a series of implicit or explicit flashbacks to engage us as an adventure tale." The New York TimesMike Hale stated the series "is a smoothly made but entirely generic show that rides the squad-room-as-family metaphor hard."
DVD release
The Warner Archive released Golden Boy - The Complete Series on DVD on August 5, 2014.
