Something about autumn just makes me want to watch detectives go above and beyond to crack a case they’ve been told is unsolvable. I wonder what exactly it is: the crunch of leaves, soup in a flask, a pocket full of conkers? The sentence “Oi, detective – my office, now!”, someone going for a run late at night and happening upon a crucial clue, pulling up CCTV footage from a shopping mall? It just works. Pull a blanket over your feet and let’s go through this autopsy. It’s autumn, baby!
Anyway, Netflix’s Bodies is here (from 19 October), which comes with the perfect promise “it has Stephen Graham in it”. I do not need to tell you that Stephen Graham is one of the best actors we’ve ever had and, crucially, has immaculate taste in projects (“What about Venom 2? And that Pirates of the Caribbean film?” Not now! Shut up!), but that does sort of misrepresent what makes Bodies such a strong offering. For the first couple of episodes at least, he is only there in passing, doing that thing where he holds his mouth stoically shut and inhales very deeply while standing up straight. What makes Bodies so interesting is the murder procedural is being told in four different timelines – 1890, 1941, 2023 and, gasp, 2053 – each with four completely different visual feels and four different but excellent lead performances. You’re following a lot of gears and they click neatly together, and it scratches a very satisfying itch when they do.
Let’s start in 2023: DS Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) has just chased a teenage boy into an alleyway and found a nude body with a mysterious tattoo who has been shot through the eye. In 1941, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd’s Karl Whiteman is tangled in police corruption while the bombs drop, and he finds a nude body with a mysterious tattoo who has been shot through the eye. In 1890, Kyle Soller’s Edmond Hillinghead is busy being a Victorian intellectual when he finds a nude body with a mysterious tattoo who has been shot through the eye. Not going to tell you what Shira Haas’s Iris Maplewood just did in 2053 (guess), but she has a very interesting haircut while she’s doing it. The body is still nude.
The fact that this is a limited series gives me a lot of hope. I often find that Netflix shows start very strongly, then decision-makers at the company start combing through audience data and posts on X/Twitter and try to course-correct a show to please a hungry audience, and that’s why Sex Education season four was like that. Bodies, like a previous “high sci-fi concept, good visual aesthetic, amazing actors” Netflix limited series, Maniac, isn’t constrained by the need to have an open-ended finale in the vague hope of a series two. It has to tell its story in exactly eight episodes, and that story is already finished because it’s based on a graphic novel by Si Spencer.
Graphic novels tend to make incredibly interesting TV adaptations because they are able to tell stories from a completely new and interesting angle of attack. That is happening here in spades: the main characters all feel like actual characters instead of the same detective copy-and-pasted four times; the visual aesthetic for each era feels solid and complete (particularly the futuristic 2053, which feels as if it actually has floors and doors people are walking on, instead of some actors wandering around on greenscreen); the interconnection of clues from one era to the next purrs along; and every single person who appears is going to get more famous as a result. There’s a lot, then, to like.
Are there some clunks? With detective dramas, there are always clunks, but it’s up to you to decide how much the smell of a bonfire and wearing a long coat over a snug jumper is going to make you ignore them. To suspend the mysterious engine at the heart of all this, every single suspect who ever gets questioned is annoyingly obtuse or speaking in riddles (“You don’t get it, do you? Everything they said would happen has happened.” There’s nothing you can do to save me!” Mate could you just give me some straightforward information please), there are some very stupid “wait a minute!” moments of realisation and evidence-spotting (“Look closely at this photograph” “It’s a –!” “That’s right. A conveniently meaty clue that’s going to keep you busy for at least three episodes”), and every single detective’s superior is working against them for no reason at all. But there’s something very, very compelling happening here. Get some hot chocolate on the go and let’s figure out why there’s no exit wound, shall we?
