Bodkin: This quirky Irish thriller makes for a perfectly pleasant few hours
Ireland is such a sexy ticket for television right now that you could probably pitch a series about a running tap and TV types would cry, ‘Sold!’, providing it delivered nuns, the Blarney stone and the craic. This is no exception.
Ireland is such a sexy ticket for television right now that you could probably pitch a series about a running tap and TV types would cry, “Sold!”, providing it delivered nuns, the Blarney stone and the craic.
Barack and Michelle Obama are in on the act with Bodkin, which was made by their production company, Higher Ground. It is a lush-looking murder mystery mickey-take of true crime podcasts and I’m afraid I tired of it quite quickly.
This is odd, because I could watch dreamy Ireland-set dramas all day. It’s also odd because it stars the impressive Siobhán Cullen as Dove, a hard-nosed, sulky Guardian investigative journalist who wears sunglasses for no reason and is so rude that I can’t believe she has ever got a story out of anyone. She is sent from London to Ireland to keep her out of trouble and to work on a true crime podcast, a genre which she thinks is morally bankrupt and, indeed, “necrophilia”.
Will Forte (Saturday Night Live) stars as Gilbert Power, the annoyingly upbeat “I’m of Irish heritage” American podcaster who initially seems to think that Ireland is some kind of shamrock-and-Guinness safari park. He is “investigating” the disappearance of three people in Bodkin decades earlier, though like many podcasters he’s not interested in cracking the case, only introducing red herrings and blind alleys to keep listeners hooked.
The research assistant Emmy (Robyn Cara) is a naive, anxious-to-please posho on a huge learning curve.
So as you can see, it’s a totally mismatched trio who become embroiled in a criminal caper that comes close to harnessing fine traits of The Tourist, Only Murders in the Building and Graham Norton’s Holding but doesn’t quite succeed.
Don’t get me wrong, the performances are good. Some are very good. The writer Jez Scharf’s script is fine and often witty.
“I used to have anger problems,” one character says after literally nailing money to a man’s body with a staple gun. “Oh yeah?” Gilbert replies. It’s a good deadpan moment. West Cork, where it was largely filmed, looks lovely. But little about the people or the events rings true. Not the plot, nor the dynamic between the three leading characters or any of the people they meet along the way.
It feels too – what’s the word? – cartoonish, as if we were playing Irish cliché bingo. Everything is thrown into the mix and the resulting pie is uneven, with some parts tastier than others.
To be clear, Bodkin will give you a perfectly pleasant few hours, the daft plot notwithstanding. But for me, “fish out of water in a foreign country” is an overridden horse. I may be wrong, but it feels as if it is aimed more at an American audience. If you want immersive dramas about Ireland there are better ones out there. Oh, I know it isn’t supposed to be taken too seriously (though the mood at times is positively gloomy) and that’s fair enough. But something about it feels forced.
The most believable character is probably Emmy, who has to run after local eccentrics with her clipboard, saying politely: “Could I just get you to sign this release form?”
I’m not sure whether ultimately it parodies true crime podcasts or celebrates them. “He thinks Ireland is some kind of Disneyland,” Dove sneers of Gilbert, who had said: “A nun in a pub! I love this country.” I got the sense at times that the series thinks much the same.
Bodkin, streaming on Netflix.