Netflix sends up its own truecrime obsession
Netflix’s latest sensation is both the latest example of – and a subversive take on – the streaming service’s beloved true-crime genre.
Executive produced by the Obamas and created by British writer Jez Scharf, Bodkin (now streaming) is a seven-part black comedy that revolves around a motley, disparate crew of podcasters who set out to investigate the mysterious disappearance of three strangers in an idyllic, coastal Irish town on the country’s night of the dead – Samhain – many years ago.
However, the US-based creator of hit true-crime show On Record, Gilbert Power (The Last Man on Earth’s Will Forte), is more interested in creating something his viewers can “listen to on the drive home” than actually solving the cold case. For him, it’s the audio that’s important, not how relevant what they’re saying is to getting them closer to the truth. “I need discourse, red herrings,” he implores.
It’s an attitude at odds with The Guardian investigative reporter Dove (Obituary’s Siobhan Cullen), who has joined Power in the West Cork village only because she’s been forced by her editor to “lie low” after an key informant on her latest project wound up dead – and there are genuine fears for her safety.
To Dove, true-crime podcasts are “morally bankrupt” and “aren’t journalism, they’re necrophilia”, while the “only mystery in Bodkin” for her “is why anyone would want to stay here”. Equally dismayed by the enthusiasm shown by the third member of their party – the newspaper’s digital expert Emmy Sizergh (Robyn Cara), who is simply glad to be out of the office – Dove believes the explanation might be as simple “as a rogue wave”.
However, once they start asking questions – and Dove points them to the right pub, not the “cliched tourist trip” they initially visit – they find a story much bigger and weirder than they could have imagined.
There are masked assailants, the local sergeant begins acting strangely and Dove is run down and clipped by a car. Then there’s the On Record-loving, island-based nuns with their spa and restaurant business and the local farmer with his “melancholy bull”.
But it’s when Dove is directly told that, “if you ask the wrong question, you’ll get a rock in your gob and your teeth on the floor” that she knows they’re on to something that just might rival her award-winning exposes of smuggling and dark money. If she can just persuade Power to focus his attentions, she might be able to prove that this cold case is – in fact – still very warm.
Fans of the latest series of Jamie Dornan-starrer The Tourist and Only Murders in the Building should check out this entertaining tale, which trades heavily on the juxtaposition of characters, both within the visiting trio and the eclectic range of eccentric and suspicious locals they encounter.
It’s a show where there’s just enough sense of menace and danger to offset the more knockabout, black comedy and hilarious internal conflict as to the status of podcasting within the wider world of journalism.
Scharf ensures there’s rarely a dull moment, weaving an engaging narrative that’s full of intriguing twists and turns.
Bodkin is available to stream on Netflix.