The sci-fi series Dark thrilled Netflix audiences as a rarely complex series experience. With Bodies, an ideal time travel mystery substitute will soon be launched.
With the sci-fi series Dark, Netflix landed an international hit that had fans worldwide falling into puzzle abysses with its convoluted time loops. The streamer has not produced a comparable series event since. The Dark team’s follow-up project, 1899, was cancelled after only one season and without a conclusion. But now there is light at the end of the mystery tunnel.
In just a few weeks, Netflix will launch the British sci-fi crime series Bodies, which already has the makings of the next series obsession for mystery-loving Dark fans. Why? Here are three spoiler-free reasons:
Reason 1: The sci-fi crime series is as enigmatic as Dark
From the very first teaser, Bodies presents itself as a gritty Netflix series that doesn’t hold its cards close to its chest. It is about four London investigators from four different years: 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053. They all come across a dead body in their respective time. The trick is that it is always the exact same corpse. How is it all connected? That is already a fascinating mystery.
Four time levels, one murder
The crime thriller concept with a sci-fi twist offers enormous mystery potential, which can only be guessed at from the scant information about the actual plot. Dark also started out as a mysterious kidnapping thriller with much more to it than first assumed.
The original premise of Bodies is enough to keep series fans guessing whether the 150-year time-travelling murder mystery will work something like Dark, The Time Traveler’s Wife or Shining Girls – or have a completely different resolution.
Reason 2: Bodies has a fantastic comic book template from DC
The basis for the new Netflix series is an eight-part comic series by the writer Si Spencer, who died in 2021, which was published in 2014 by the DC imprint Vertigo. The original captivates as an ambitious puzzle that presents no simple answers and invites you to analyse, interpret and puzzle. Only those who put together individual pieces, cryptic symbols and hidden clues themselves will get closer to a solution.
Shira Haas and Stephen Graham in Bodies
The streamer’s offerings include countless easily digestible originals that are trimmed to be easily consumed or binged by the masses. With the complexity of the graphic novel behind it, however, the Netflix adaptation has the best prerequisites to offer a sophisticated series experience.
And without spoiling the original, provided Bodies doesn’t completely alienate the comic book basis, we can expect an exciting series mystery full of wacky twists that will close the gaping sci-fi hole left by Dark.
Ground 3: Bodies is much more than just another Netflix crime thriller
Conspiracy thrillers and crime series abound on Netflix. With Bodies, however, we are presented with not just one, but four different crime series in one. Each of the four time periods shown has its own unique visual and narrative style.
Andor star Kyle Soller in Bodies
Already in the comic, the four stories serve different aspects of the crime genre – which hopefully will also be reflected in the series. Thus, in the era of Victorian London, we follow a classic detective story with secret society intrigues and dirty back alleys – with Andor star Kyle Soller.
Adapted from film noir, 1940s tells the story of a corrupt policeman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in the throes of World War II. In the present, we experience a modern police thriller between hate crimes and assassination plots. And at the latest in the future vision of the year 2053, Bodies takes a completely new direction as a sci-fi thriller (with Shira Haas).
Now the new Netflix series just has to prove that it can live up to all these promises and turn the exciting basic idea into a clever and surprising story. Then we could really expect a new mystery hit like Dark.
