Bodies

Four Body Problem

Bodies
8 Episodes
Airdate: 19th October 2023

Warning: Some spoilers attacking you from different parts of history.

Well now, Bodies has an interesting premise, which gripped me straight away... so I should have realised it was based on a comic book (by Si Spencer and not a graphic novel as the opening credits to each episode try to make out) from the DC/Vertigo imprint, almost a decade ago. Now, I haven’t read that original comic yet (don’t worry, it’s now on my hit list) so I can’t tell you if this closely follows the comic book although, it’s such a high level concept that, I suspect it’s not far off... some of the characters may have been tweaked for the show, is my guess.

Okay, so here’s the set up. Four detectives, Alfred Hillinghill (played by Kyle Soller), Charles Whiteman  (played by Jacob Fortune Lloyd... who recently played Buckingham in the French Musketeers movies), Shaharah Hasan (played by Amaka Okafor) and Iris Maplewood (played by Shira Haas) find a dead body in Longharvest Lane in London. The body is naked, has the left eyeball shot out (although there’s no trace of a bullet inside the head when the autopsy is performed) and has a strange kind of symbol, scorched/tattooed onto the wrist.

So far so good but... here goes... Hillinghill lives in the 1890s, Whiteman is living in the 1940s (during The Blitz), Shaharah is living in 2023 (contemporary to when this series was released) and Maplewood lives in the 2050s. Oh... and it’s exactly the same body each one finds, in exactly the same condition... although, when Maplewood is introduced to us at the end of the first episode, the body is still just about alive. And so this starts off as a police procedural of sorts, as we follow each detective simultaneously and, as the ultimately time twisting investigation continues (well, that’s half of it but... four versions of the body, remember? And, no, it’s not clones... it is the same person.), the two characters in 2023 and the 2050s slowly realise that this is not the first time this body has been discovered in Longharvest Lane. Both start to look for clues in the past.

And to say much more really would be even more spoilerish so I’ll refrain and say... like a lot of modern TV shows, it’s not the style of the show or, in this case, the remarkable acting performances of all and sundry that keep you watching... it’s the story which gets its hooks under the skin and pulls you into things.

There’s some nice world building going on too, especially in the 2050s... for example, Maplewood shouldn’t be able to walk but she has a rechargeable device which she plugs into her spine to allow her to walk (and run when required) normally. There’s are also a few surprise betrayals and much manipulation involved as we discover that each of the detectives, from their respective time zones, are being manipulated by a conspiracy group that knows exactly what is going on. And yes, the lack of bullet in the brain of the victim when various autopsies are performed on it from their separate time zones, is explained when you see the eye injury happen... in an absolutely stunning slow motion shot of an eyeball exploding everywhere, as the bullet travels through it... which is the most spectacular ocular injury sequence I’ve seen since Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel released Un Chien Andalou onto an unsuspecting public.

The final solution to the conspiracy and the time manipulation uncovered by this four body problem is also pretty interesting... with a final parting shot of a temporally displaced character and a building decorated with a certain set of initials turning up in the wrong year, for sure... something to haunt the viewer at the end (it’s also a possible continuation point if anyone wanted to make a sequel, I would guess but, I can’t see that happening). There are also some nice visual metaphors and echoes from time to time (literally, from time to time) which make the series worth watching too.

And I think that’s all I want to say about this intriguing series called Bodies. Definitely worth a watch, I would say and, I wish this one was released on a proper Blu Ray edition so I could show it to people instead of letting it have its fifteen minutes of fame and then wallowing in obscurity for the rest of time. But that’s modern studio thinking for you... the same kind of thinking that is killing the art of the moving image, it seems to me.