The new Irish-set murder-mystery comedy hits Netflix from today.
For Irish audiences, there's always a certain reticence when it comes to shows set on our shores made by those not necessarily from here.
There's exceptions, of course, but the general rule is to treat any foreign-conceived idea with either benign dismissiveness or outright disdain. Coming into 'Bodkin', however, it's only fair that the shields are up. After all, it's a murder-mystery set in a sleepy Irish town that hides a dark secret long buried being dragged up by a true-crime podcast with a cast of colourful characters populating said Irish town. So far, so hum.
Yet 'Bodkin' manages to assuage those well-founded fears from the outset in the form of Siobhán Cullen, best known to audiences here from her role in 'The Dry' alongside Ciarán Hinds and Roisin Gallagher. Playing a hardened, cynical journalist who's left Ireland for London, her scepticism and utter contempt for diddley-eye bollocks is a welcome foil to Will Forte's beguiled, naive sentimentality about the place. Forte, who's more than capable of playing a hapless wonder from the likes of 'The Last Man on Earth' and cult favourite 'MacGruber', pings off Cullen like it's rubber and glue, with Robyn Cara caught between them as the equally bewildered research assistant.
As to the charming locals, it's a trove of Irish talent, led by the incomparable David Wilmot. Switching between settled warmth and charm to blood-curdling terror and intense rage in the blink of an eye, Wilmot is more than capable of standing in for the inherent dissonance in our own identity. Yes, it's beautiful and it's quaint at times, but there's a bleakness and a darkness right underneath. Chris Walley, late of 'The Young Offenders', plays a scheming driver while Denis Conway plays the local Garda with a fiendish twist that's all too familiar. David Pearse, always reliably sinister, turns up a New Age Traveller who believes in peace, love, and collecting debts by any means necessary while Pat Shortt turns up as a farmer caught up in the conspiracy.
On the surface, it's easy to make a comparison with 'Only Murders In The Building' in that it's a true-crime podcast that's self-aware enough to acknowledge how worn out the genre is. Much of the first episode sees the townspeople of Bodkin asking in that genial but insulting way if anyone would actually listen to it, and later we find nuns and shopkeepers talking about their favourite true-crime shows. Yet, where the comparison deviates is that 'Bodkin' is completely comfortable going to far more sinister, twisted places than anything 'Only Murders In The Building' might have explored. Moreover, the deep reserves of biting sarcasm and bitterness provided by Siobhán Cullen and David Wilmot is enough to congeal any sense of fizziness.
When you come away from 'Bodkin', much like the namesake, the blade goes in deeper than you think. Marked with sharp writing throughout, quick and nimble directing, and a cast more than able to slice up thrills and comedy with ease, 'Bodkin' catches the gleam in the blade.