‘Bodkin’ Review: Will Forte in Netflix’s Low-Key, Ireland-Set Mystery Comedy True Crime Podcast

Netflix’s new darkly comic mystery series about true crime podcasting, is a slow-burn, not to be confused with, true crime podcast briefly adapted as an Epix series.

Created by Jez Scharf, boasting Obama’s high ground among its producers and featuring Will Forte as its most prominent star, it’s a show I’m invested in by the end. Felt a reasonable amount of work. But the overall effect belies the fact that this is a series that does a lot of little things well in less significant ways rather than doing one thing brilliantly.

It’s a satire without any big laughs, a puzzle without many shocking twists and character studies, but of a very muted kind. If you go in looking for a big reaction to anything, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for some subtle insights into our natural love of voyeuristic storytelling, some cleverly rendered Irish settings and some great performances — Siobhan Cullen, in particular, has to be in everything — an easy one. Makes a seven-episode binge.

My appreciation for the show is understated and rightly so, as a show about a group of storytellers who go in search of something shiny and commercial, only to find something darker and more human instead. To find out. It’s about making your peace when the truth falls short of expectations and learning that not everything has to be sweetened with narrative gimmicks and sensationalism.

Cullen plays Do, an investigative journalist. His latest story, involving a whistleblower leaking secrets about the NHS, went horribly wrong, and he is now under investigation himself. To avoid distraction, Dove’s editor sends her to rural Ireland on a new assignment: she’s to help out on a new podcast she’s partnered with, a respected podcast writer, Gilbert Power (Forte). Pigeon hates podcasts and doesn’t particularly respect Gilbert’s work.

Gilbert is semi-famous, but not necessarily good at his job. He had a hit podcast season, a fluke that affected his life, followed by several failures, but the younger Bodkin has a story that he thinks could reshape his career. . See, 25 years ago, three people disappeared in the middle of the annual Samhain festival. Gilbert believes that a combination of unsolved mysteries, some quirky local color and possibly some personal elements could prove to be a disaster as he reconnects with his Irish roots. He is like a pigeon running away from something in his life.

The reportorial trio is rounded out by Amy (Robin Cara), a restless researcher who idolizes both Dove and Gilbert without fully understanding the grim reality of their jobs.

They arrive at Bodkin and, after a little appreciation of the town’s sophistication, begin to get hints that the story Gilbert is prepared to tell is not the real story.

Almost every episode begins with Gilbert’s voiceover, which is a collection of generic platitudes. They’re a warning.” — which will be familiar to regular podcast listeners. Gilbert has preordained and predestined what happened at Bodkin in his mind, and he’s moving reality forward as he envisions it. Trying to increase.

Viewers are going through a similar journey, because we think we recognize the kind of fish that wants to be a dark comedy out of water. At least for an episode or two, the show gives us something that resembles that. In that regard, Forte is something of a Trojan horse. There’s nothing overtly comic about the way he plays Gilbert, but our familiarity with Forte’s version of the man-child act suggests it should be. For a while, it puts Gilbert at the center and layers in various eccentric supporting characters and running jokes, mostly gently poking fun at podcasts and the people who love them. But this is not that story and this is not his story.

The show sets the audience up for a spectacular array of humor and mystery, including a sprinkling of real-world details – allusions to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Ireland’s Magdalene refugees. Peeling Back the Layers is generally less wild (though one formally experimental episode playing with the perspectives of our three main characters is probably my favorite of the season), less entertaining, less provocative and less thrilling. , but perhaps on more emotional grounds.

Several performances anchored the show, starting with Cullen’s. Whether or not you’ve seen the Irish actress in previous TV work — it’s on Hulu, on BritBox — she’s instantly one of the funniest early episodes and the most dramatic part of the show’s progression. But it is surprising. More than any other character in the series, he has an appreciable arc. Whether she’s using the script’s myriad obscenities as a weapon or more quietly examining Doe’s painful past, Cullen underwrites Beats with a sense of the earned. Cullen and Cara both get to play a wider range than Forte, who remains utterly articulate and effectively earnest, without being cartoonishly naive.

The series, which features Nash Edgerton and Bronwyn Hughes as its primary directors, generally feels right thanks to its beautifully photographed West Cork locations and a deep supporting cast. Starring David Willmott as a local with unsettling secrets and Fonola Flanagan as a leading lady. A nun with a disproportionate number of secrets. Yes, everyone has asymmetric secrets, but it’s pretty easy to keep them straight.

You have a hand in unraveling its mystery, but not in spelling out its message, which I appreciated. The way podcasts, starting with Gilbert Lampoon’s voiceovers, can sometimes try to convince fans that there are simple lessons to be learned from retelling and enjoying tragic stories. Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not!

I, the answers are the same for the storyteller and the listener, and for each character, because there is no clear hero or clear villain. While “Mud” isn’t always the recipe for a moving and engrossing drama, here it worked for me more as I was in the immediate viewing process than I thought afterward.