The first episode of Bodies left me with the impression that it was yet another solid cop show, with a twist. Granted, the twist is so substantial that it should be referred to as a Twist – four detectives discover the same body, in the same spot, decades apart – but for a brief time, it seems good rather than great. Fine, not fantastic. It begins in 2023, with police attending a far-right march in London’s East End, but hops back to 1941, and 1890, before pulling off an even more audacious leap. The modern-day stuff is thrilling and tense; in the past, it is cartoonish and cod-historical. But as the first episode came to an explosive end, I immediately started the next. And the next, and the next, and the next.
It starts us off gently, in the present day. Detective sergeant Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) spots a young man with a gun lingering shiftily on the sides of the fascist march. She follows him and discovers the body of a man, apparently shot through the eye, and stripped naked. Back to 1941, where we meet ladies’ man Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), a Jewish detective whose colleagues are antisemitic and suspicious of his motives in joining the force. He, too, is due an encounter with the very same body. The clock goes back one last time, to 1890, as impressively bearded detective Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) navigates the subcultures of Victorian Whitechapel, before, what do you know, finding the body, in the same alley, laid out the same way.
