Bodkin

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??

But in the end, I could barely finish this thing.

The overall vibe reminded me of Hot Fuzz with Only Murders in the Building.

I've been a fan of Only Murders since s1 and was hoping this show to be pretty good. It is said to be a dark comedy but it didn't feel like it most of the time.

I also sense some Hot Fuzz vibe out of it but maybe it is because of the setting. I would honestly love it more if it was like Hot Fuzz too.

I think it was just too slow and not that interesting. I got lost in the overall plot and was too lazy to backtrack to catch up with it in the end.

So yeah... it was just another meh series for me.

The pluses? The cast, including the dozens of extras that add layers of believability to the odd little Irish town.

The story, a cold case about a long ago trio of missing persons, combines with a creaky Pod-cast Scooby Do adventure, and it meanders a lot. This makes the early episodes a bit slow. The action picks up in the later episodes starting with #5. However, the narrative begins to jump around a lot, flashbacks from other characters perspectives, and hops from one character to another too often.

The eventual resolution of the multiple threads is both a bit of a letdown, and a whirlpool of wrong assumptions getting vetted one by one.

The comedy isn't as non-stop as some reviews and the trailer suggests. It's dark and filled with the personal demons of the heroes complicating their efforts. The personal renaissance each person goes through is satisfying, if a little too neatly accomplished. There are some sly funny moments though, filled with irony and a lack of self awareness.

The three protagonists are conflicted individuals, performed very well by a surprising cast. Siobhan Cullen's Dove is an unrepentant b!+@# who has big problems brewing back home in London. Robyn Cara, who has made a career of playing ditzy characters, at first seems to be playing true to form, but her character Emmy reveals more depth and complexity as each episode unspools. Will Forte is an acquired taste, and his character, Gilbert, is a doofus who's made big mistakes that are nipping at his heels. He continually gets in his own way trying to be nice. Fortunately he becomes less of a tool as the season nears its conclusion.

David Wilmot turns in a great performance as Seamus Gallagher, the mysterious townsman with a scary past, who is trying to embrace a "normal" life.

I recommend it, it isn't high art but there are some laughs and good performances..

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.

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.