Bodies

You might want to not read this if you intend to watch the show (there are probably spoilers, but since they are in the trailer, I blame Netflix) Though I didn't know it when I started watching, 'Bodies' is based on a graphic novel I've not read. I'm not sure exactly what led me to start watching it, but I think I may have mistaken it for something else when I hit play on what turned out to be episode one of eight. The first couple of episodes are pretty good and they introduce a visually interesting premise; three (at first) police officers, each existing in different times ('now,' 1941, and 1890) discover an identical body of a murder victim on the same street in London. Each of the officers investigates the case with the technologies available in their different eras while we watch, wondering how this is going to get itself all resolved. The next few episodes sort of tread water, introducing more and more seemingly irrelevant (though, as a viewer of modern media, the audience expects that at some point this pile of cards better look like a house and not just a game of 52 pick-up) plot strands. And then, the final few just muck it all up because (and I genuinely hope that this doesn't ruin whatever enjoyment you might get out of it) it's all just a time travel story that, like all time travel stories that choose to ignore multiverse theory, just tangles itself in ever stupider knots trying to explain everything while landing on a resolution that doesn't just boil down to 'well, I guess it's just fate. What can you do?' (Multiverse ones are a mess too, it's just that they are different kind of mess). Also, and I don't care if this is a spoiler, it offers yet another example of the 'bury your gays' trope--do better people. Visually, all the episodes looks pretty good (in a cgi kind of way), but the best thing the show has going for it is the performance of Amaka Okafor, as the contemporary era officer, which is actually quite nuanced, even as things get sillier and sillier around her. Also worth a call out is Jacob Fortune-Lloyd who is one of those surprisingly few people (actors or otherwise) who don't look out of place in a 1940s period setting; most people now, even with makeup and clothing, just do not look like people from that era. It's in the bones and he's got 'em. Fortunately, he's also pretty solid in the part, which requires him to carry a lot under the surface. Anyway, I guess it's fine if you like that sort of thing but for me, I need to figure out what I was trying to watch in the first place....