Television Bodies (Netflix series)

[Port Vale Devil]

This looks absolutely fantastic with rave review. Stephen Graham is usually brilliant so hopefully it lives up to the hype.

Basically 4 murders hundreds of years apart with the same victim in a time hopping mystery.

 

[horsechoker]

It might be an unpopular opinion here but I really like Stephen Graham.

 

[Dirty Schwein]

It might be an unpopular opinion here but I really like Stephen Graham.

My fav actor after Nic Cage.

 

[horsechoker]

My fav actor after Nic Cage.

Well that's just good taste.

 

[OnlyTwoDaSilvas]

Anyone seen it yet? It's based on one of the worst comic books I've ever read, and it seemed to be universally panned. Strange that it was picked to be adapted for TV. It's been raved about though, so I'll give it a go, especially as Stephen Graham is usually excellent, and one of few scousers that its acceptable to like.

 

[Wibble]

I'm enjoying it so far but I fear it will get very silly indeed by the end.

 

[CallyRed]

It might be an unpopular opinion here but I really like Stephen Graham.

The best Scouser

 

[limerickcitykid]

The trailer looks like they’ve just tried to adapt Dark into a British murder mystery.

 

[Donaldo]

The trailer looks like they’ve just tried to adapt Dark into a British murder mystery.

Definite echoes there, and to their credit it's little more than that.

Overall, a 6/10 from me. Engaging enough, nice period takes and good po facedness on some frankly awful dialogue. Hardly think there was any suspense though. I'd expect a lot more twistiness from a time travel, multiple timeline show. Graham is good, but as someone not acquainted with his entire body of work, he just always reminds me of his oafish character from the Pirates movies.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Ep 1 was great!

 

[Roosney]

Watched the first episode, it's decent. 6/10 is quite accurate rating, a bit more tension building would make this a lot better.
Now it's a bit rushed and light when shows like this should have a dark gloomy feel to it

 

[Port Vale Devil]

Just finished it and it was pretty good once you can get your head around the timelines and following the characters.

Enjoyed the stories of the four detectives with their flaws and guilt.

 

[Wibble]

1 episode to go and while it is more or less holding it together so far I fear it might still end up very silly indeed.

 

[christy87]

Finished it, but it leaves questions to be answered like

Spoiler

how does he exist to become his own great great grandpa if he never existed in the first place to go back in time the first time [/SPOILER

 

[Goldfiessli]

Just finished it and would rate it at a 6/10, too.
To me, it feels a lot like Dark, just more straightforward, which is a shame imo as the characters in Bodies are fairly one-dimensional, imo.

 

[Ayoba]

I like Stephen Graham but he cannot for the live of him do an american acccent. His attempt in Venom 2 was laughable

 

[Hoof the ball]

It might be an unpopular opinion here but I really like Stephen Graham.

Unpopular? He was fvcking outstanding as Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire.

 

[Wibble]

Finished it, but it leaves questions to be answered like

Spoiler

how does he exist to become his own great great grandpa if he never existed in the first place to go back in time the first time [/SPOILER

He still exists in the future I assume (2053 I think) but not in any previous time.

 

[Wibble]

1 episode to go and while it is more or less holding it together so far I fear it might still end up very silly indeed.

Not ludicrously silly but a rather pedestrian ending. Worth a watch but nothing much to write home about.

 

[christy87]

He still exists in the future I assume (2053 I think) but not in any previous time.

Still makes no sense to me, for the time loop to start he would’ve had to blip into existence.

 

[Wibble]

Still makes no sense to me, for the time loop to start he would’ve had to blip into existence.

Harker travelled back to the earliest time period from 2053. If the bomb didn't go off the chain of events that resulted in Elias being born is broken and results in Elias never existing. I'm fairly sure that is what was meant, but not 100%

 

[Nialler]

I thought Dark was much better, Twelve Monkeys (TV show & Film) was much better also. I really wanted to like Bodies, I think Stephen Graham is a great actor, the costumes and period sets were excellent but the execution was too convoluted, eight episodes was too few to fully develop the story/characters.

 

[Roosney]

Quit after two episodes, such a snore fest and really really uninteresting characters.

 

[77]

I should have baled out when the time machine showed up. I'm 6 in and can't do any more.

 

[horsechoker]

It was solid enough

But two things confused me

Spoiler

When Defoe got close to his body it started spazzing out and he died so I though that two of the same person can't interact. Yet Sahara hugs her future self and nothing happens

Spoiler

Why did Maplewood go to 2023 at the end?

Was she trying to become Harker/Mannix?

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

Started watching this on Friday and I'm already down to the last episode. Amazing show.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

Two episodes in, really enjoying it ... Except the actress who plays Maplewood being absolutely dreadful. Feck knows what that accent is about.

 

[horsechoker]

Two episodes in, really enjoying it ... Except the actress who plays Maplewood being absolutely dreadful. Feck knows what that accent is about.

She's Israeli so I think that's just her accent

 

[atkar83]

Just finished it, I really liked it. Solid throughout and some great characters

 

[utdalltheway]

It got annoying for me so I gave up after 4 or so episodes. I struggled to care about any of the characters and the story jumped around a lot so I just lost interest.

 

[Cheimoon]

Just finished the series. I suppose all of this must be hidden.

Spoiler

Harker travelled back to the earliest time period from 2053. If the bomb didn't go off the chain of events that resulted in Elias being born is broken and results in Elias never existing. I'm fairly sure that is what was meant, but not 100%

Yeah, it's a little lame. It's all pretty coherent until they decide they need a happy ending and the cycle is anyway broken. Then people start disappearing when it's convenient (just after the hugging) and we have the typical time travel paradox (how was the chain broken if Elias never existed? why would there be imprints on people's minds anyway?). That wasn't an issue when the cycle still somehow happened anyway.

Why did Maplewood go to 2023 at the end?

Was she trying to become Harker/Mannix?

I'm pretty soon that final scene is just a teaser for another season. The very final shot also shows KYAL (Know You Are Loved) being projected on the building next to The Gherkin. I'm assuming the story will be that things anyway get messed up somehow in the future (maybe an attempt by the writers to resolve the paradox), and Maplewood again had to time travel to fix things.

 

[Mockney]

Two episodes in, really enjoying it ... Except the actress who plays Maplewood being absolutely dreadful. Feck knows what that accent is about.

She's Israeli so I think that's just her accent

She was excellent in Orthodox, which was big on Netflix, so I’m going to assume she was cast by the algorithm because it was really bizarre casting. Particularly to give her a cockney brother and parochial backstory. She could’ve just been Israeli and it wouldn’t matter but for some reason we had this Jean Claude Van Damme shit where every scene was a weird exercise in pretending not to notice her very thick accent, or the fact that she looked like the worlds most emo eight year old.

 

[Fully Fledged]

Spoiler: This is so weird.

Okay forgive me if I'm wrong. The whole premise of the story is that a man get's a girl with drug addictions pregnant, then chucks her to the curb. Has his son grow up in the care system and become so traumatised that he's willing to blow up half of London just to find out what it's like to be loved.
He's so messed up by what he's done that he goes into the past and has a copper killed so that he can groom his daughter.
The guy that got the girl pregnant did this so that his son could grow up being loved. Why not just love him in the first place?

 

[Cheimoon]

Spoiler: This is so weird.

Okay forgive me if I'm wrong. The whole premise of the story is that a man get's a girl with drug addictions pregnant, then chucks her to the curb. Has his son grow up in the care system and become so traumatised that he's willing to blow up half of London just to find out what it's like to be loved.
He's so messed up by what he's done that he goes into the past and has a copper killed so that he can groom his daughter.
The guy that got the girl pregnant did this so that his son could grow up being loved. Why not just love him in the first place?

Spoiler

Yeah, it's messed up if you see the continuity as something you can affect. I felt like the series summarized its point when Defoe talked to Maplewood about inevitability and the lack of free will. If they had kept with that idea, then the ultimate outcome would have been that nothing changed despite everyone's best efforts - which maybe would have been a bit disappointing, but at least consistent.

But of course, at the end, they sin against that principle and let the loop be broken and history be altered. Before that happened, you could argue that things are just like that, a freak of history, but then anything theoretically can happen, so why not. But once it turns out the loop can be broken, you can start questioning everything, and yes, then the original course of events is rather silly indeed.

 

[Superunknown]

A slight bump. Sorry! I finished watching this with the wife a few days ago and we both really liked it. It takes a few episodes to get going as it's setting up the pieces on the board, but it does find its groove and was ultimately a very satisfying watch. I think it goes without saying that Stephen Graham was an excellent choice for the role, but in truth I thought the casting was pretty great. There's a little something to like/love in each of the eras. My favourite eras were the two earlier time periods and it's a shame that the series is over as there was still so much more that could have easily been explored during these eras. I'm a sucker for time travel themes but especially if there's sci-fi elements mixed with the 1800/early 1900s.

I thought the show weaved a web that more or less straightened out and made sense by the time it finished. I do think that Dark was far superior, but only because it was allowed to have its time and span the three seasons, which is most definitely needed. To cram what they crammed in 8 episodes of Bodies was pretty cool, imo. It's an epic tale, but they condensed it nicely without rushing too much. I would have been satisfied had they split it over two seasons, but still I think they paced this well.

Know You Are Loved!

 

[Hugh Jass]

Yea this was very good when i watched it.

 

[horsechoker]

Know you are a cnut

 

[Superunknown]

Know you are a cnut

KYAAC

 

[buchansleftleg]

Quit after two episodes, such a snore fest and really really uninteresting characters.

Yes I got to the end of the second episode and just felt like not carrying on with it. Reading about the level of content in the graphic novel it's clear they just decided to ditch large parts of the narrative here and whole bits just didn't make sense.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Victorian timeline - Lets just have a male character make a pass at a policeman at a key moment because...well he's probably gay or bicurious right? - I don't know why all those countless people were imprisoned / sectioned for their sexuality in this period - they clearly should have developed the "gaydar" of the young guy to avoid such issues rather than suffer imprisonment, the madhouse or financial ruin!

WW2 Timeline - Looking past the atrocious "wicked villain" acting of Weissman - we have him discussing the plot loudly over a telephone in a crowded room (with telephonists who could easily be listening in as they would have physically connected the call to his exchange. We have a strong Anti-Semitic storyline - so maybe time travellers have influenced events so that the Battle of cable street (1936) never took place or have been fomenting anti-Semitic comments....no never mentioned again. The receptionist rejects his advances saying she "has to put up an Anderson shelter" - in late 1941 that's a bit delayed, given most of them were distributed in 1939 to residents in London and that by 1942 German bombing raids on London were massively in decline.

2023 timeline - Well at least this timeline has someone that can act - DS Hasan is well played but let down by immense plot holes....Oh so your family location has been compromised and under intrusive surveillance by a leading suspect for murder... best leave grandad and the kid at the flat so they can be attacked rather than move them to a safe house or provide extensive police protection. Got a location for your murder suspect's motor home...arrive at the caravan park loudly with sirens blaring and THEN start looking for the motor home.

Future timeline - Facist Regime! - we meant it MAAAN! overly friendly neighbour with bottles of foreshadowing and lots of 1984 type soundbites from work colleagues in new Met Police HQ that is painfully trying to be as diverse as possible . Acting has fallen back into patterns of barely being able to deliver lines unless EMOTION STRONG! Luckily unmodified Twin owns maguffin that identifies DNA and locates victim faster that Facistic regime could.

The whole thing seems to have been designed with a "mood board" approach rather than properly constructed narrative. I gave up because I was expecting more of the same to come, so tell me did we get....

Victorian Timeline - Policeman's wife accepts his new "lifestyle choice" and enters polyamorous open Marriage with a leading suffragette?

WW2 timeline - Montage to soundtrack of "In the mood" by Glen Miller as kids have fun playing in rubble and find a bomb / open a tin of spam or cheer the arrival of Yanks offering sweets and gum?

2023 timeline - DS Hasan overcomes the ineptitude of the whole of the Met Police by breaking the rules/ not following procedure / having just 24 hours to solve the case or it gets mothballed

Future timeline - The Event nearly happens but is changed somehow because of other events...the word is a different place....or is it? ooh scary huh!

Committee script writing I suspect.

 

[GazTheLegend]

It was absolutely garbage. It was basically a straight rip of Dark only without any of the intellect or charm. Even the usually excellent Stephen Graham looked way out of sorts