Matthew Law Drives Nemesis Tv Show in Kemp’s Netflix Debut
Matthew Law fronts the nemesis tv show as Detective Isaiah Stiles, and Courtney A. Kemp uses her first Netflix show to turn a familiar crime setup into a slow-burn pursuit of a heist crew. The review calls it a “ridiculously entertaining cop show” that “gets better and better by the minute.”
That matters because the series is not just another LAPD drama. It gives Kemp, who created Power and its spin-offs, a new streaming vehicle built around heists, a family fracture, and a detective who is already on the edge of losing his badge.
Isaiah Stiles and the LAPD
Matthew Law’s Isaiah works with the LAPD while sleeping in the summer house, alienated from his teenage son and his wife Candace, played by Gabrielle Dennis. He is carrying trauma from an old case in which a junior colleague was killed while pursuing a gang of elite thieves, and he has built a whiteboard in his office covered in photographs and sticky notes to keep the investigation moving.
Isaiah also believes the man behind that earlier killing is tied to a robbery in Los Angeles that saw bags of cash stolen from a posh party’s high-stakes poker game. He concludes that the poker heist and a later jewellery raid were carried out by the same crew he has been pursuing, which gives the show a clear procedural engine instead of a one-note chase.
Coltrane Wilder and Amos
Y’lan Noel plays Coltrane Wilder, an esteemed pillar of the Black business community whom Isaiah believes is masterminding the crimes. The review says Isaiah risks losing his gun and badge if he keeps pressing Coltrane without hard evidence, and that pressure gives the series a real procedural cost rather than an easy hero-villain split.
Moe Irvin plays Amos, Isaiah’s father, a convicted gangster whose feckless criminality got Isaiah’s brother killed. Kemp pushes the family damage into the case itself, and the result is a story where the detective’s personal history is not decoration but part of the evidence trail he keeps following.
Two episodes, rising stakes
Nemesis quickly establishes its setup in two episodes, then opens outward into betrayal, unexpected alliances, switched loyalties, and a mole in the LAPD. The review also says there is a big boss overseeing Coltrane’s crimes, and that boss is his sister-in-law, which adds a layer of command structure to what could have been a standard police-versus-crew story.
Some of the acting is occasionally wooden and melodramatic, but the review still singles out Law and Noel as strong leads. That balance is the point: Kemp’s first Netflix show is built to hold attention with familiar crime-drama parts, then keep moving once the cleanest explanations start to fall apart.
