Bodkin

The dark-comedy-Irish setting works pretty well in this series. 'Ah, must be an Irish thing'-moments are mixed with comedic WTF-moments but not to the point where you lose focus.

I especially liked the performance of David Wilmot as a grunty Irish old man and Siobhán Cullen as the annoyed journalist. I hope she has the chance to star in bigger productions after this. The acting of Will Forte was a bit unfitting in the beginning but it gets better soon.

They story itself is pretty good but not masterclass. Classical thriller story where more and more is revealed during the series. Some minor plot holes in the end and unclarified things but I guess they have left them in for a possible second season.

Solid fun watch for a free weekend.

PS: Have absolutely no clue where people come from when they mention violence to animals. Not a single animal in distress is shown.

The beginning of the show was very promising, the first 4 to 5 episodes were very dark and moody with a touch of humour and good acting. The start of what seemed to be a solid story. Maybe a tad too much storylines but overall enjoyable to watch.

Some of the many characters were irrelevant to the core of the story and disappeared into thin air, a lot of loose ends. Others weren't looked into enough.

Then came episodes 6 and 7... honestly, I haven't seen such a bad ending of a show since Game of Thrones. It was a bit laughable really. Like many reviewers here I was really disappointed.

Such a shame.

First of all: I really love the absurd and hilarious scenes in this series.

For example, when a farmer offers the protagonists a lift. Next scene: the women are sitting on a tractor chugging through the countryside at 10 kilometres per hour. Cut. The whole tractor is shown from the side, lit up like a party mobile in colourful neon lights and continues to chug through the countryside at 10km/h.

The story itself is rather semi-interesting. It feels endlessly drawn out and uninteresting in places. Yes, it's supposed to represent the usual dead ends in this genre, but it's just not 'catchy' enough.

A very ambivalent series for me. Sometimes really absurdly funny, sometimes incredibly boring. But always beautifully filmed.

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??

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.