Bodkin on Netflix review: an ironically lifeless murder mystery
When London-based investigative journalist Dove (Siobhán Cullen) finds herself at the centre of a whistle-blower’s suicide, she’s sent away by her editor to assist American True Crime podcaster Gilbert (Will Forte) and researcher Emmy (Robyn Cara) in uncovering a decades-old mystery.
The eponymous town of Bodkin is situated somewhere within the rolling hills of West Cork, Ireland, under the shadow of a mysterious past event. Twenty-odd years ago, three members of Bodkin’s community went missing under suspicious circumstances on the night of Samhain – a Gaelic festival which falls on the same day as Halloween.
Though Gilbert often serves as the narrator, the series is largely driven by the unbearably selfish, irrevocably damaged and entirely unlikeable Dove. Emmy, meanwhile, wants to be just like her disillusioned mentor and, despite becoming aware of Dove’s shortcomings as a human being, Emmy is led down a similar road of self-absorbed abandon.
Don’t let Gilbert’s gentle exterior fool you, though. He is perhaps the worst of them all; a podcasting one-hit-wonder who is hell-bent on getting his career back on track, winning back the love of his estranged wife, and making millions at the expense of Bodkin’s tight-knit community in the process.
What makes Gilbert and Dove different is that the former pretends to be a good person, while the latter (at the very least) has no qualms with embracing her manipulative personality. Emmy sits flits between the two depending on the episode, making her character fickle and frustrating to follow.
Bodkin was created by Jez Scharf, and also happens to be executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama via their production company Higher Ground. Though the ingredients are there to lure viewers into an instant binge-watch, it ends up being is a real disappointment.
Pegged as a darkly comic murder mystery, the entangled plot is packed full of what Gilbert himself refers to as “red herrings”. These consistently ridiculous sub-plots lead nowhere in an attempt to trick the viewer into thinking they’ve inched closer to uncovering the mystery at hand.
Instead of kick-starting the adrenaline rush that leads us to watch an entire series in one sitting, these red herrings result in an overall feeling of remarkable disinterest. From illegal eels, illicit hippie communities and Romanian adoptions to not-so retired smugglers and Irish gangs, the series is awash with a tidal wave of glaringly obvious and tired distractions.
Even worse, the sub-par nature of the story is consistently lamented upon by the protagonists attempting to drive it. In episode one, Dove says “True Crime podcasts aren’t journalism, they’re necrophilia.” We hear Gilbert’s wife utter, “We can’t fix this in the edit” in episode six.
The show’s self-referential nature tries to be clever, but doesn’t achieve much. Rather than offering a darkly intellectual, pseudo-supernatural piece of meta comedy, Bodkin instead hinges upon a poorly developed plot which could easily serve as a just-about passable creative writing task for English Language GCSE.
Dove longs to be as far away from her ancestral homeland as possible, Emmy disappears into the arms of ridiculous love interests, and Gilbert plunges further into his self-obsessive soliloquys. The motley trio seem just as desperate to ditch the damp squib of a story as the viewer.
As the three podcasters continue to pull on threads that they have no business investigating, Bodkin is set alight (quite literally) with entirely unnecessary mayhem. At times, the series has stylistic elements which are reminiscent of big hitters such as Big Little Lies, Fleabag and even Stranger Things.
Bodkin, however, lacks the magical quality that makes those other shows spectacular. We couldn’t care less about the town or its inhabitants because the creators have failed to produce a single character worth rooting for.
The ironically lifeless murder mystery is only redeemed by some much-needed comic relief, some fancy title sequences and a fabulous score filled with Gaelic music. For a show that’s entire shtick is about the power of a good story in true Irish-revival fashion, it fails to tell one that has any real effect.
