Gers wrote:
Bodies
What a massive disappointment this turned out to be. Flagged as Netflix’s big autumn show, and came highly recommended by The Guardian no less, I was immensely frustrated with this.
It was a great premise. The same body appearing in the same London alley in four different time periods. The 1890’s, 1940’s, the present day, and the 2050’s. Then we have four separate detectives trying to solve the case, before the inevitable time travel nonsense takes hold, and all four timelines start to coalesce. Apparently it’s based on a graphic novel, which I’m usually in favour of, but this just didn’t do it for me.
The cast was so-so I guess. None of them were great, and when you add the usually wonderful Stephen Graham into the mix as the main protagonist, well! It shows that adding someone with his gravatas to something won’t always guarantee success.
It was okay, but just that, okay. The usual signifier for me when watching a miniseries is whether I want to immediately watch the next episode. I didn’t with this.
I mean, Stephen Graham was more of the antagonist in this wasn’t he? It’s a bit of a conundrum because of the type of character he plays but I never felt like he was the main character.
I thoroughly enjoyed it though. Unlike Gers I was hooked at the end of each episode and the only reason I had a break in between two of the episodes was because my partner wanted to watch strictly. Perhaps that’s because sci fi/fantasy things are usually my favourite genre and I went into it knowing absolutely nothing other than Stephen Graham was in it and it was meant to be highly rated.
Some twists were readable, some weren’t and I found myself floored more often than not. The ending had me scratching my head in a ‘Whats happened there then, I need to know why that happened’ kind of way. I really liked Kyle Seller’s character (Hillinghead) and I love a good time travel with consequences story too.