Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Netflix
You, me, and anyone with even a tangential grasp on modern technology may have true-crime podcast fatigue. But for the people of Bodkin, Ireland—the titular, fictional shoreside town in Netflix’s new mystery series Bodkin, premiering May 9—the true-crime podcast wave hasn’t even begun to crest. That’s why, when popular podcast host Gilbert Power (Will Forte), his researcher Emmy (Robyn Cara), and crotchety investigative reporter for The Guardian Dove (Siobhán Cullen) step foot in Bodkin, they’re welcomed with wide-eyed fascination.
That is, until the trio starts poking around, looking to cover a decades-old cold case that still haunts the town and its colorful characters. When local threads are pulled, their once-knotted history unspools, revealing dark and absurd secrets. Bodkin takes pleasure in stringing viewers along, winding itself past red herrings and red-haired residents who all have something to hide. While the series sometimes mirrors the pace of Bodkin’s small-town life too literally, drifting aimlessly to fill time, its enthusiastic cast—led by the terrifically cast Forte and Cullen—keep Bodkin stimulating enough to be more than just a knockoff Only Murders in the Building. Instead, it skewers the macabre voyeurism of true-crime podcasting, implicating its viewers just as much as its characters, to surprisingly refreshing results.
After three seasons of Only Murders, last year’s Based on a True Story, 2019’s Truth be Told, and a quietly vicious Portlandia sketch, television seems to have reached its limit for shows about making true-crime podcasts. You’d be forgiven for wanting to avoid Bodkin entirely based on its stale premise alone. (You can practically hear the pitch meeting at Netflix now: “Three people investigate a crime to make a podcast—this time, in Ireland!”). But the show, at the very least, anticipates its audience’s exhaustion—something other shows don’t typically contend with.
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