4 out of 5

Created by: Paul Tomalin

Here’s an indirect spoiler, right at the top: it’s not about the story, it’s about how the story is told. Which is to say: Bodies, an 8-episode timey-wimey mystery sci-fi thriller, has a fair amount of plot holes. …Which one could consider part and parcel for any timey-wimey anything, to be fair – with countless “but what if…” and “but why…” moments that dug further little divots around those holes – but these do pass into a kind of egregiously inconsistent territory. However, countering that is a grippingly paced and intriguingly structured narrative that made all of those divoted and holed moments must-see, regardless. It’s not so much style over substance – you still care about the story – it’s more that you end up caring about how those wrapped up in the story evolve, and the exact Whys kind of allowably fall by the wayside. And I think this only ends up working as well as it does because creator (basing the story on the comic by Si Spurrier) and main writer Paul Tomalin still moves things forward consistently, creating an interesting layering of plot and characters that heavily favors the latter, but nonetheless is mindful that the former is still required to complete the package.

Bodies concerns four timelines – 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053 – and the four dead bodies that show up in the same exact location in those timelines (and may, in fact, be the same person), and the four detectives investigating each: 1890’s DI Hillinghead (Kyle Soller), 1941’s DS Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), 2023’s DS Hasan (Amaka Okafor), and 2053’s DC Maplewood (Shira Haas). There are other curiously linked intrigues beyond this conceit: a man who seems to appear, in some form, in every timeline (Stephen Graham); the phrase “know you are loved,” and the related appearance of some form of secret society; and characters who seem to know what’s going to happen before it happens. This mystery is fun to follow and pick apart, with each detective pursuing it in their own particular way, often driven by their various internal complexities, relevant to their stations in life, and their time periods. But because of how well each actor creates those realties, the latter part of that story development ends up being what’s so rewarding: experiencing these characters overcome or adapt to that which seems insurmountable, and very impossible to understand. 3D characters, grappling with the 4th dimension.

The first episode is maybe a bit too cryptic for its own good, playing things slow in an atypical way that makes it hard to understand what our focus is to be, and suggesting this is going to be Lost-y baiting the whole way through. However, this proves to be what makes the above narrative balance so successful: the big swing of the story is pretty much presented up front, as we jump around the four timelines, and deal, very clearly, with the same murder, repeated again and again. Everything beyond that is just following leads: in-context believable breadcrumbs in terms of the murder; logical extrapolations of how each detective steps a little more and more out of their comfort zones.

So it creates a fun paradox for the viewer: I was holding the idea in my head that not much of the core story really mattered, but the themes were strongly effected, which made me addicted to, and very, very invested in everyone’s story. Everyone. There’s not a main character which feels expendable, with everyone getting at least one episode to really prove the nuance in their portrayals.

Maybe not the strongest work of science fiction, but absolutely one of the stronger and most satisfying pieces of genre television in recent past.