Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bodies’ On Netflix, Where The Same Body Is Found During Four Different Eras Spanning 163 Years

Time-bending mysteries are always fun to watch, but it feels like a new series that’s based on a DC graphic novel takes this concept to an extreme. It involves a body that’s found in four different years, spanning the timeframe of 1890 to 2053.

BODIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman in a group of runners runs across a bridge in London. As a trainer pushes her, she tells one of the runners behind her, “I’d pay extra if he’d just shut up for five minutes.”

The Gist: In 2023, DS Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) is called in on her day off to help secure a far-right protest march in Whitechapel. Suddenly all of the street lights flicker and explode. As Hasan tracks a gun-toting teenager named Syed Tahir (Chaneil Kular), their chase leads her into Longharvest Lane, where she finds a naked body (Tom Mothersdale). The dead man looks like he was shot through the eye, and he has a tattoo of three hashmarks and a slash on his wrist.

In 1941, in a London that is suffering from a massive bombing campaign by the Germans, DS Karl Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) is called in by his boss to discuss the squad having a lot of “near misses” in their investigations. Inspector Farrell (Jonny Coyne) from the commissioner’s office suspects that Whiteman, whom he calls “Weissman,” is involved in a conspiracy led by Jewish officers on the force. After the meeting, Whiteman gets a call from a mysterious woman (Greta Scacchi) telling him to pick up a body on Longharvest Lane and deposit it elsewhere. She signs off with the line, “Know you are loved.” As he hangs up, the lights flicker and explode. When he gets to Longharvest Lane, he sees the exact same body Hasan saw 82 years later.

In 1890, DI Edmond Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) sees the streetlights explode as he supervises patrol officers taking a child from a seemingly neglectful mother. He’s brought by an officer to Longharvest Lane, where the same body that Hasan and Whiteman found is lying there. The body is being photographed by a journalist named Henry Ashe (George Parker).

Both Hasan and Hillinghead have to contend with the fact that there are no shell casings, no exit wound, and autopsies that reveal no bullet embedded in the victim’s brain. Hasan thinks that the teen with the gun, Syed, might know something, and her boss, DCI Jack Barber (Michael Jibson) wants her to talk to Syed’s sister, despite the fact that she’s attending her father’s birthday party with her son. When Syed does finally agree to meet, he utters a mysterious line: “Know you are loved.”

Hillinghead tells Ashe that he needs the journalists photos as evidence, and when he goes to collect him, Ashe tells him that he saw a reflection of a mysterious man (Stephen Graham) in a nearby window. When Hillinghead asks what his alibi was, Ashe shows him photos of closeted same-sex couples, including himself. When he doesn’t tell the cop who’s in the photo with him, for fear of reprisal, the cop arrests him for indecency and obstruction.

Whiteman collects the body, but he finds himself followed by a police car as he drives to the drop-off point. Farrell is in the car, knowing that something is up with what Whiteman is doing, but just as Farrell is about to find the body, German bombs go off. The body is found the next day along with Farrell’s body, and Whiteman is given the lead into the investigation.

Finally in 2053, DC Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) is driving and the lights again flicker off; her electric vehicle also turns off, as well as a hologram of man who looks similar to the one Ashe saw in his photo. When the car scans for a source of the anomaly, it sees something In Longharvest Lane. She goes there and, you guessed it, finds the same body as the other three detectives over the past 163 years found. But this time there’s something different.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bodies is based on the graphic novel by the late Si Spencer, and it’s hard to compare this plot to anything we’ve seen on TV. But there are similarities to the 1979 film Time After Time, where H.G. Welles chases Jack The Ripper from 1893 London to 1979 San Francisco.

Our Take: Showrunner Paul Tomalin (Torchwood) and co-writer Danusia Samal had their work cut out for them in trying to adapt Spencer’s graphic novel, given that there are four timelines to juggle, all tied together by the same body. The first episode, though, shows that they might just pull it off, given that the detectives at the center of each story are distinctive and well-played by their respective actors, and that the four stories themselves are relatively distinct from one another.

The body ties them all together, of course, and eventually things will get even stranger as the detectives somehow help each other during the investigation. But in the first hour we saw more than enough story for at least Hasan, Whiteman and Hillinghead to show what they’re all up against in their particular time period. We don’t see as much about Maplewood, but we’re sure that’ll be taken care of in the second episode.

Things would get tiresome if the four timeframes had similar story beats. In fact, we were pretty happy to see right away that the way Whiteman found and dealt with the body was completely different than how Hasan found it. Whiteman is working for someone whose business isn’t all that legal, and how that will blow back on him as he investigates the body is a particularly interesting storyline.

What has us curious is how the story will start linking the four detectives and their investigations together. Graham’s character, a political leader named Elias Mannix, is the throughline, and his role will be better-defined as the season goes along. All of it has us interested in seeing where things go next, and that’s exactly what the first episode of such a mind-bending story should be doing.

Sex and Skin: Besides the naked body, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Like we said, there is something distinctly different with the body in 2053. But we won’t say what it is.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Stephen Graham not only because, well, it’s Stephen Graham, but his character is so mysterious that we’re curious about what his role in all this is.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Are you really so afraid of it?” Ashe says to Hillinghead after he makes a pass at the detective; the detective’s response is to cuff him, and not for fun reasons.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Bodies takes what could be a confusing premise and crafts four distinctive stories that will eventually be linked together.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.