Watching: Bodkin

2024, Netflix

Editor's Note (Am I the Editor? Is that the Other Voice? I am?) This was the usual jumble bumble post but then I reworked it into the 100-thing.

What 100. Things are weird in Bodkin, not truly comedy funny. Anywayz, we watched this darkly comedic (was it? comedy? or just weird?) series about an American podcaster (Will Forte, The Last Man on Earth) seeking out his next Big True Crime season in the small Irish village of Bodkin, with Dove (Siobhán Cullen, Dalgliesh) the investigative journalist and Emmy (Robyn Cara, Mix Tape), the assistant. They are bankrolled by Dove's paper, but really its an excuse to get her out of England because her whistleblower informant just killed himself. They are in Bodkin to investigate the disappearance of three people twenty years prior, during a Samhain festival, which has since traumatized the village.

Note: I don't count the people explainer text as part of the word count.

1 - Great.  Was there anything great about it? I suppose I most enjoyed Dove, or Dubheasa Maloney, the Irish curmudgeon who is there only for "the story" and doesn't give a shite about anyone, especially the podcaster. She's a major league asshole. At first she just grates, but they do a really good job of having her grow on you, and eventually, you grow to actually like her. That really is often the point of these kinds of shows, the quirky, "darkly comedic" ones, not the classic British pastoral murder investigation shows.

Also, Seamus Gallagher (David Wilmot, Station Eleven), the Bad Guy, who ends up being the most sympathetic character --- almost. He's handled with complications, which was refreshing.

1 - Good. The setting. The show definitely has a "Ted Lasso meets Broadchurch" vibe about it where things just keep on getting weirder and weirder with mystical or dark tangents. And the village itself is just quirky-enough to keep you interested in its colourful inhabitants, but also become endeared to a few.

1 - Bad. The mystical sub-plot. I hate mystical sub-plots that are just tossed in because that is what people have come to expect about rural UK & Ireland --- a land of magic and mystery. Dove keeps on seeing a wolf, a ghostly figure that we are supposed to think will tie in with the Samhain festival and why people disappeared. Scrrrrritch. As usual, in these shows, its all just metaphor for trauma and mental health issues. There is no mystical, just people.

You really need to stop these all over the place posts about TV shows you completed and just embrace the Kent thing.

There? Are you satisfied? It does lend itself to not having much to say about something.