This review is in honour of @meesterboom, who suggested that I watch this time travelling show as I'd enjoyed The Lazarus Project. It took me some password begging from family to watch it, as I don't have a Netflix subscription, but I certainly got on it as quickly as possible as I adore a wibbly wobbly timey wimey show.
Saying that, there's time travel shows I haven't enjoyed at all - I didn't like 'Beforeigners', about people seeking refuge from the past (though the premise was good) and I couldn't get into 'Outlander' at all, finding it more in the realm of soppy historical fiction. The German show 'Dark' was fabulous, although many found it's lack of clear answers disatisfying. Looking through a long list of 'TV shows featuring time travel', I realise just how many I haven't watched, and started to think about what exactly I liked about time travel and what made a show about it good.
12 Monkeys was absolutely epic, if you're looking for a sample of the genre, where James Cole tries to wipe out a virus that threatens to destroy humanity. So I do like an element of the apocalypse in my time travel. There's nothing like having to visit different times to change things just enough to avert disaster, sometimes again and again. Interstellar and The Edge of Tomorrow were both brilliant. Last week I reviewed The Lazarus Project, which I found gripping, stylish, fun and full of well fleshed out characters.
So I was excited about Bodies.
The overarching premise is good. A body - the same one - turns up in four different time periods in London: 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053. A detective from each time period tries to get to the bottom of the mystery. Firstly, I was disappointed with the cliche of two of the time periods - Victorian England and World War two are two periods that are so often used in TV that I found myself yawning a little. I am also starting to be really, really tired of the amount of shows I'm watching with homosexual relationships. It seems so tokenistic. Don't get me wrong, I love a love story in any sexuality, and I appreciated how falling in love with a man might have posed an issue for the male detective in 1890, but it felt very contrived to me. The only redeeming element of this was how that story resolved, though it took a yawningly long time to get there.
Tedious was the general review as I slogged through this. In fact, @mesterboom did warn it might be slow to start, but it did pick up after episode 3. I'm sorry, but who waits around til episode 4 for something to pick up? Me, obviously - as it was moderately enjoyable, and I was hopeful about where it'd end up.
There was another thing about Bodies I found a little contrived also. The four time periods each revolved around a plot that centred around difficulties with bodies - prejudice against homosexuality (one character insists more than once to the 1890 detective that being homosexual is fine in his future utopia, which sounds rather - utopian idealistic to me), anti semitism, anti Islam, and issues with disability, where the future detective has an implant, cyborg style (SPYNE) so she can work. In each time period, the characters must not only go up against the time cult run by Elias Mannix (Stephen Graham, who never seems to get a real chance to shine here, and I love everything he does) but also their place as outsiders. I felt this could have been more deftly developed as I never fully sympathised with any of them enough to care about what happened to them.
The only character I started to care about was Polly, who is manipulated to fall in love with and marry Mannix, which would be lovely since Mannix had a terrible upbringing which - surprise surprise - drives his evil plan, except isn't, because she never seems in control of her destiny at all, nor seeks to. The why of loving her husband is never entirely made clear, except he has a lot of money and mysterious knowledge of the future which is kinda cool for a Victorian bachelorette whose only skill seems playing piano. I did want to know more about the complexities of her life and why she so easily followed her time looping husband, who was actually her great, great, great something grandchild. There's nothing about how much she loved her child, which I suspect was the only reason she wasn't making any attempt to break the time loop.
I feel I'm ranting about this more than extolling a time travel show I liked.
I love Stephen Graham, but his character lacks dimension here
Broadly speaking, this show was entertaining enough. However, time actually went weird as I was watching. Why spend so many episodes on things that we could understand in half an episode and do little to progress the plot? Why wait til the last two episodes to detail Elias Mannix when his story could have been deftly told as the others were? Leaving him til the last minute did nothing to add a plot twist that wasn't half way guessed already.
And why, since the future had a time machine, didn't they send someone back to kill Mannix as a child rather than letting him live out the loop? There's actually a lot of oddities in this show that I noticed when I shouldn't have - I know there's flaws in all kinds of time travel dramas (my husband the physicist would insist that it's because time travel isn't possible - but he's only a physicist, what would he know?) but this seemed to have more than most.
Forbes described Bodies as Dark Lite, Very Lite - apt!
There was some pretty cool things too, like the creepy woman who bit off her tongue because she was unable to deal with the craziness of time travel, or the bomb that had been kept ... wait, I shouldn't plot spoil too much, lest you do watch it.
Sorry, @meesterboom - I tried to enjoy it, and I did find it entertaining, but this is definitely a show that was disappointing and ultimately forgettable.
Would I watch it if there was a season 2?
Of course.
I love time travel.
⭐⭐.5 /5 - watchable and entertaining enough, but slow and too many plot failures and underdeveloped ideas. Watch The Lazurus Project or 12 Monkeys instead..
With Love,
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