Netflix's 'Bodies' Is a More Simple-Minded 'Dark'

I don’t know how I feel about television shows that successfully create their mysteries by telling their story non-linearly. Bodies hides the ball behind various timelines throughout eight episodes when it could have told the same tale linearly in two hours. That’s mostly what Bodies does in its last two episodes: It unties the knotty timelines, straightens them out, and fills in all the blanks left by the earlier episodes to form what is a modestly entertaining movie-length version of the same storyline.

Is that cheap? Maybe. Is it also effective? Absolutely. By concealing major plot points behind various timelines, the Netflix series strings the viewer from one question to the next, less interested in the characters and more interested in figuring out the mystery (and racking up viewable hours). Heavy on plot and light on character is a formula that works well for the streaming service.

In Bodies, there are four timelines: 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053. The same naked dead body appears in the exact London location in each of the four timelines. There is a detective in each timeline assigned to the case. In 1890, DI Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) tries to solve the case while exploring a forbidden same-sex attraction to a photojournalist, Henry Ashe (George Parker). In 1941, DS Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) — a Jewish cop forced to confront antisemitism during World War II London — is being instructed by a mysterious organization to dispose of the body and kill anyone threatening their agenda.

In 2023, DS Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) believes she has a reasonably straightforward murder investigation involving a naked man with a bullet hole through his eye. However, in her investigation, she encounters characters who know exactly what will happen to them and are powerless to stop it, and she can’t figure out how they can see the future.

In 2053 — 30 years after a bomb explodes and changes London forever — DC Maplewood (Shira Haas) not only discovers the same dead body but also discovers the physics professor to whom the body belongs. He’s still alive, which means his corpse is from the future, which means that time travel must be possible, which means that there’s probably a link between all four timelines besides the dead body.

Spoiler: It’s the character played by Stephen Graham we see in all four timelines who keeps saying, “Know you are loved,” an enigmatic refrain among several characters. The mystery, then, is how did Stephen Graham find himself in all four timelines and what are his motivations? Unfortunately, the answers to those questions are much less interesting than the mysteries surrounding them.

Not that Bodies isn’t satisfying. It’s fun to assemble a puzzle, even if the picture is as uninteresting as a stock photo. There is much ado about little, and the details surrounding the 2023 explosion that changed the world are vague, both in its motivation and consequences. There are, however, a few fun surprises along the way, and some excellent performances from Shira Haas (Shtisel) and, especially, Stephen Graham, a journeyman character actor who has never really gotten his due. (In America, he’s probably best known for playing Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire). Truthfully, while the ending slightly let me down, I mostly enjoyed the journey, albeit less so in the 1941 and 1890 timelines.

Here, now, is the requisite spoiler for the ending:

The throughline for all four timelines is the character played by Graham, who goes by two names, Julian Harker and Elias Mannix. In 2023, as a teenager, his parents abandoned him; he’s into drugs and crime, and he’s wholly miserable and unloved. In 2053, however, he finds a time-traveling portal called The Throat and uses it to create an alternate world where he is happy and cared for.

To do so, he goes back to 1890, steals Julian Harker’s identity, and makes a fortune through investments using the knowledge he has from the future. He gets married, has a kid, who has a kid, who has a kid, etc., and Elias Mannix ultimately becomes his own great-great-grandfather, sets off a bomb in 2023 that kills half a million people in London, and becomes the ruler of a 2053 dystopia, then jumps into the time portal again to ensure the time loop stays intact. The only problem is that no matter how often the loop plays out, Mannix is still a miserable teenager.

2023 DS Hasan figures much of this out throughout her investigation, and in 2053, she aids DC Maplewood’s effort to break the time loop and prevent the 2023 bombing. It entails going back to 1890, making a change that prompts Harker/Mannix to reconsider his life. Harker makes a record in 1941 that DS Whiteman hides so that it can be discovered and listened to by teenage Elias Mannix in 2023. After listening to it, he decides not to blow up London, which spares the world of half a million deaths and a dystopian future while effectively erasing Harker/Mannix from the timeline.