"Bodkin": 10 minutes of gritty urban crime, then paranormal pagans, with some gay teases and a nude Irish bloke

 Netflix has been pushing and pushing the tv series Bodkin at me.  I have no idea what it's about, except that "bodkin" comes from the old expletive  "odds bodkin,"   But I'm running low on content to review, so let's go in.  It's 4:00 am, so I'm watching on my laptop, with the sound muted.  This will be important later.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of a city I don't recognize. Narrator Gilbert Power says: "When I started this podcast, I didn't expect to solve anything.  I didn't expect it to change my life."  Let me guess: by meeting the Girl of Your Dreams?  "But most of all, I didn't expect Dove." Yep.

Scene 2: Dove, the Girl of His Dreams, a rather hard, scruffy looking sort, enters a sleazy apartment, calling for Krtek.  Sounds Polish -- maybe this is Warsaw? The place is a mess.  "How long have you been holed up here?"  Uh-oh, he's hanging in the bathroom.  Suicide!  A cheery way to begin.  

Before the Girl can react, there's a knock on the door: a priest in a devil's mask.  She directs him to Dave's Halloween party upstairs. Dave is not a Polish name.. The devil priest calls her "mate," so we must be in Britain.  Not London, though.

Scene 3: Establishing shot of a pedestrian bridge, a welcome relief after the near-impenetrable darkness of Scene 2.  Dove tells the Boss that she's been investigating this story for 18 months, and she's not stopping now. He points out that her key informant just hung himself, so she's in danger and needs to stop. 

"Nope, I'm obsessed."

"This scandal could get us all shut down!  I'm putting you on another story. In Ireland."

"Ireland!  No fucking way would I ever go back to that horrible place after all of the horrible things happened to me there!"

"Tough,  you're going.  It's the best place to hide, because no ever goes to Ireland.  You'll be working with your Love Interest, a podcaster named Gilbert Power."

"No way!  I hate podcasters. Sadistic necrophiliacs!"

Scene 4: At the Dublin airport, someone is screaming at Gilbert (Will Forte), calling him a sadistic necrophiliac who gets off on murder.  I guess a lot of people hate podcasters.

"I'm more into hearing people's stories.  The mystery of the human heart." Dove interrupts, astonished that anyone would fall for that load of b.s.

Gilbert introduces himself and the girl who is screaming at him, his research assistant Emily.  She tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores her. So the employee of a podcaster thinks that podcasters are monsters! 

Scene 5: Back to the near-impenetrable darkness as the three and their driver head through a scary forest in County Cork.  They're going to have lunch, and then investigate the site where the scary, disturbing Samhain festival was held. 

Wait -- what about the gritty crime story Dove was investigating back home?  Was it all irrelevant, just a very long excuse to get her to Ireland?  So the real story is about neopagans with crazy, murderous rituals, like Midsommar?  That's annoying -- I spent ten minutes searching for a character named Krtek  (it means "short") and a pedestrian bridge in Warsaw.

Their driver, Sean (Chris Walley, top photo and left),  tries to be friendly, but Dove rudely ignores him.  Geez, this lady is a total jerk.  Maybe she'll be redeemed by her Love Interest

The mystery: 25 years ago, three unrelated people disappeared during a local Samhain festival.  They closed it down, but now it's up again, so no doubt more people will be eaten by a Samhain monster.

Scene 6: They take photos at the site of the festival, praising its beauty, but I think it's dark and depressing.  Check your color pallette, editors!  Driver Sean points out a billboard praising a local amoral monster, who went to Silicon Valley, made shitload of money, and then returned to destroy the town by building a server farm. I imagine that he'll be the Big Bad of the series.

"Wait -- I don't want high tech," Gilbert exclaims. "I want to see small, isolated, quaint, traditions from 300 years ago still in use, and not a single cell phone."

Dove buys sunglasses for a dismal, overcast day.  A little girl praises them, and she says "Fuck off!"  Gilbert, baby, the Girl of Your Dreams is a sociopath.

Scene 7: In the quaint town of Bodkin, they interview two geezers, who make fun of Gilbert for doing podcasts -- but know what happened to the missing lads 25 years ago: Geezer #1: "A rogue wave got 'em."  Geezer #2: "They were disturbing the fairy stones, so they were eviscerated.  You don't disrespect the fairies!" So we're going to have some paranormal.  That's more interesting than that stupid organized-crime story back home.

Scene 8: In their bed-and-breakfast, the manager makes fun of them for doing a podcast, and criticizes Americans for being stupid and obese. In another room, a spirit-animal wolf stares at Dove, then leaps out the window. She assumes that it was a dog, but the landlady, hearing about it, gets all flustered and distracted. Besides, there haven't been any wolves in Ireland since the 18th century.

Scene 9: Next stop: Ailibhe's Hollow, a circle of stones where the villagers held their Samhain Festival until that night 25 years ago. The smiling, chubby Darragh arrives to explain that the festival was really used for a "sneaky ride." Figure it out yourself. Meanwhile, Dove calls headquarters to complain about Gilbert being an idiot.  She's anxious to get home and work on real stories.

More after the break

Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve afterlife mysteries. With Luke Gage and WW1 soldier bonus

 

A growling, snarling World War I soldier -- played by Chris Pereira -- chases two teenage boy ghosts through the British Museum.  The intellectual Edwin surmises that his gas mask is cursed: they'll have to destroy it to restore him to wholeness, so he can go on to the afterlife.  They'll need the Minor Arcana, Volume 4, but the athletic Charles can't find it in his magic bookbag.  

With the ghost-monster in hot pursuit, they run through a mirror, but end up in a hotel, not back in the office.  Edwin explains that it's hard to locate the right mirror-dimension when you're being chased by a gas mask monster.  

Flashback to the Dead Boy Detectives office a few days ago: A World War I nurse explains that she's been hanging aroud the British Museum long after her death to help the many lost souls from her era enter the afterlife.  But one has been cursed and turned into a monster.  She hires the boys to help him.

Left: Chris's butt

Back in the present, the boys rush through the hotel, find another mirror, and end up in their office.  The monster follows!   Charles manages to tear his gas mask off -- the snarling monster underneath spews blood all over and tries to stab him. Meanwhile Edwin finds the right book, says the incantation, and the gas mask bursts into flames.  Back in human form, the ghost is calm, but confused.  The boys tell him that he 's dead, still fighting a war that ended over 100 years ago. 

Left: Chris's cock.  I know he only appears in this episode, but where else are you going to see it?

Uh-oh, Death is coming to guide him to the afterlife.  The boys have to hide, or she'll take them, too!

That's a lot of world-building in five minutes, but it comes while the boys are being chased, assaulted, threatened, and zapped about, so it goes down easily.  

The Dead Boy Detectives, a paranormal take on the common British "boy detective" genre, appeared in a number of comics and limited edition graphic novels during the 1990s and 2000s, all taking place in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe.  Edwin, the intellectual one, died in 1916, when some boarding school bullies tried to scare him by pretending to offer him as a sacrifice to Satan.  The spell worked, and he was sent to hell.  

He stayed until 1989, when some of the residents of hell escaped and laid waste to a boarding school. The athletic Charles was killed in the ruckus.  He would be going to the Sandman-world version of Heaven, but he decided to wait and hang out with his new ghost-buddy.  Now they are detectives, helping lost souls with unfinished business, lost memories, or curses that prevent them from moving on. They must keep a low profile and not perform much magic, to avoid detection from Death and an afterlife "Missing Souls" bureacracy.

Spoiler alert: In the comics, Edwin is gay, and Charles is bisexual.  They don't date each other, however: who said any two random gay/queer dudes must automatically be into each other? 

I watched the first episode of the tv series to see if the pair, now played by the considerably older George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, were heterosexualized.

The answer after the break