purple-mug

It is transparently obvious that Timothy Spall is having the time of his life in the role of former TV detective and now retired ham and you just can't help but share in his glee. British comedies that actually raise a laugh have been rather rare of late so it's a delight that a return to Wales after Gavin & Stacey's exit has given us another. Gwyneth Keyworth makes an excellent foil for Spall veering between awestruck and exasperated, competent and bewildered in the presence of her favourite TV character/actor. The love/hate banter between the two as they reluctantly accept their need for each other is very much the highlight of the show.

This is the sort of production that you've been swearing they don't make any more. Vibrant, colourful and full of characters who know that good often comes at the cost of a little wickedness here and there. Thomas Brodie Sangster is a highly believable, still largely child-like, Jack Dawkins, aka. The Dodger while David Thewlis, mercifully free of the stereotypes that have dogged the character in the past, makes easy work of the shamelessly light-fingered Fagin. But it is the unashamedly scene-stealing Maia Mitchell as the most unladylike Lady Belle, the governor's daughter, who catches the eye. Which is not to say that we are short-changed on the minor characters with a pliable governor whose scheming wife is clearly the true power, an incompetent chief surgeon with a total lack of self-awareness, a dour policeman who "hangs people for a hobby", and a proper villain played with relish by Tim Minchin. Seems they do make them like this after all!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any plot involving time travel, especially any that attempts to deal with the so-called grandfather paradox, will necessarily be so full of holes that, if it were a fishing net, only the great whales would be endangered by it. In that regard, Bodies certainly does not disappoint, piling impossibility upon impossibility at a head spinning pace. However it is the panache and insouciance with which such concerns are dealt that determines whether a show will emerge battered to death or greatly loved. With great performances from the lead characters, particularly Jacob Fortune Lloyd as the thoroughly corrupt wartime cop whose heart is melted by a child (a charming live-action debut for Chloe Raphael), and a brilliant script that revealed only as much as necessary at each stage and kept you guessing until the very end, Bodies easily triumphs over its unavoidable absurdity.