In Netflix’s comedic thriller, Will Forte and Siobhán Cullen seek journalistic absolution and find a whole lot of trouble.
By Jarrod Jones
True-crime podcasts have just as many fans as haters, and there’s a chance that Bodkin, the Netflix series from Jez Scharf that premieres May 9 about a trio of bickering podcasters, will appeal to both.
In a sense, Scharf’s mystery series, set in a beautiful, isolated Irish village, is optimal content for the Netflix binging model. It shares the protracted rhythms of typical true crime in that it’s brimming with detail while stashing its most salacious revelations for the end of each episode, almost as if it’s daring its audience not to hit play on the next one. Episodes are inundated with tin-eared true-crime clichés, but it’s done winkingly by Will Forte, who drops lines like “the more you learn, the less you know” and other such inanities. Its score, by Paul Leonard-Morgan, evokes the plinky earworm themes from investigative podcasts like Serial, a creative choice that seems almost Pavlovian in its design. Bodkin knows what it is, and thanks to this self-cognizance, it becomes more.
Yet, as good as Bodkin is, no amount of quality character work or engrossing mystery can kick enough dirt over how dumb it is to hear the word “podcast” repeated again and again. That might explain one of the show’s better recurring jokes: Gilbert (Forte), a Chicago-based podcaster eager to both please and impress, frequently tells folks from the provincial Irish village which gives the show its title that he’s doing a podcast. The retort we often hear, delivered in that politely barbed manner the Irish tend to excel at, is priceless: “And will people listen to it?”
The humor in Bodkin is, to put it mildly, droll. It sets a mood as much as the dramatic elements of Scharf’s story, and that blend of wit and melancholy mostly clicks. It makes much of the events that transpire in this fictional town feel both conceivable and ridiculous at the same time, even if those barbs are eventually sanded down by kindness and virtue before the end—an inevitability, perhaps, considering Bodkin is produced by Higher Ground executives Barack and Michelle Obama. Still, the series’ off-kilter approach is successful, by and large, and puts steam behind the many intrigues that uncoil during its seven-hour runtime.
