Bodkin

The beginning of the show was very promising, the first 4 to 5 episodes were very dark and moody with a touch of humour and good acting. The start of what seemed to be a solid story. Maybe a tad too much storylines but overall enjoyable to watch.

Some of the many characters were irrelevant to the core of the story and disappeared into thin air, a lot of loose ends. Others weren't looked into enough.

Then came episodes 6 and 7... honestly, I haven't seen such a bad ending of a show since Game of Thrones. It was a bit laughable really. Like many reviewers here I was really disappointed.

Such a shame.

Bodkin focuses on a trio of clashing personalities who are investigating disappearances in rural Ireland for a podcast. The early episodes are engrossing and dryly funny, particularly in the contrast between reality and the stereotypical American perception of Ireland as an idyllic ancestral utopia. As the series progresses the tone becomes darker and the narrative fragments. It gets progressively less funny but it remains engrossing. And then there's the seventh and final episode, an unsatisfying disappointment that wraps everything up with a goofy setpiece, fails to provide closure on the fate of the most interesting character, and steals its denoument directly from B. J. Novak's Vengeance.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bodkin and highly recommend it to mystery fans who like small town mysteries with quirky characters.

This was so much fun...it starts with an American podcaster named Gilbert Power, who is played endearingly by the funny Will Forte. He had success in his first podcast season solving a cold case. The key to his success was really the fact that he opened up emotionally and shared what he and his dying wife were going through. Since the first season his podcast has struggled, but he is on a trip sponsored by a British newspaper to look into a missing person's case in the small Irish town of Bodkin. To accompany him on this trip is a Pollyanna-like young assistant named Emmy (Robyn Cara) and a dour investigative journalist named Dove Maloney (Siobhán Cullen). Dove wants to be anywhere but playing sidekick to a fake journalist like the podcaster Gilbert.

The beauty of this small town mystery is all the quirky characters...like their driver Seán, who thinks he is an Albanian orphan adopted by his single mom and as such listens to Albanian rap music, Seamus who may or may not be a smuggler, Teddy who sings like an angel and is an amazing blacksmith...but has suffered a brain trauma, Maeve and Frank who live like hippies...or their own version of it "Peace, Love, and Pay your xxx debts.", a nun named Mother Bernadette who is running a nunnery that is more like a spa/yoga retreat, then there is the local boy Fintan who made big with his server farm etc and now is back home wanting to reinstate the town's Samhain...then there is the thespian undertaker...the list just goes on and on.

The town hasn't celebrated Samhain since three locals went missing twenty years prior on that night. This is the mystery that our gang of three is looking into. The podcasting element was entertaining, especially since they poke fun of it and it's popularity. The mystery was actually decent and I loved the twists and turns. The one character I found difficult to watch was Dove, her ends justifies the mean's attitude was really tiring and frankly watching her be downright cruel to people was not entertaining. The reverse was true about Seamus and his kind treatment of Gilbert especially over his troubles with his wife...which was surprisingly tender and heartfelt.

The comedy was great and we found ourselves laughing out loud...the mystery however is what really kept us involved till the very end. I loved seeing everything come together. I was able to solve parts of the mystery before they were revealed, but it didn't hamper my enjoyment.

For the majority of its 7 episode runtime, really except the last two episodes the show is really well done. Gilbert's unnaturally chipper attitude and Emmy's seeming ditziness paired with Dove and the towns somber attitude works really well.

It's atmospheric and feels somber but moves with a quick pace and the humor that is there is really well done and the trio follow a whole lot of leads and find out more information and secrets with every passing episode.

The settings and scenarios all seem real and the actors do a great job in bringing their characters to life, especially the guy who plays Seamus.

But the last two episodes needed to be three. There's a wildly rushed ending to an Emmy plotline, major information introduced too late to work as well as it should, conflicting/muddled information with regards to one of the father son duo's and Gilbert acts like a twit well past when he's proven himself not to be.

That said, the climax is what the show wanted to build to and it is well done, tying basically everything up neatly and doing a lot to salvage its two sloppiest episodes in an effective way.

Good show, worth a watch, given another episode or two it could've been great.

Bodkin starts off wonderfully -- great acting, great scenery, great direction. And Will Forte turns in a terrific performance as an overly cheery Midwestern loser trying so, so hard to redeem his life -- his acting is superb. Actually, so is everyone else's: there's not a weak link in the cast.

There is a weak link in the script, however. That superb start ends up getting drowned in red herrings and weird turns and an overly complicated plot that disintegrates by the last episode. A shame, because for at least half if not more of the show, it knowingly mixes comedy, crime and even a bit of surrealism perfectly. They just didn't know how to end it.

One other note: someone in this show really, really doesn't like dogs. If you do, you might want to skip it. Seriously? Gratuitous canine violence??