Bodies
Netflix isn't afraid to do high concept science fiction adaptations, just look to their recent success with 3 Body Problem. Bodies also fits strongly into this category, relying on a strange admixture of the grandfather paradox and the song made famous, in my mind, by The Muppets, "I'm My Own Grandpa." And it's a really clever conceit, the same body shows up in four different time periods, 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053, and detectives in each time period have to find a way to work across the eras without being sure that their work will pay off and stop an extinction level event that Stephen Graham's character Elias Mannix triggers in 2023. Bodies obviously wants to be Blade Runner meets From Hell with a hefty dose of The Prestige and Line of Duty, and if you replaced Blade Runner with The Fifth Element but with bad prosthetics, you're spot on. Because no matter how good the acting is the failure of the prosthetics give it a slight cheese factor. Amaka Okafor aged up has this weird neck that looks like it's almost all peeling glue. As for Stephen Graham's various looks? I mean, the least said the soonest forgotten. And I think at this point they actually realized it was working against them and tried to keep him out of frame on his deathbed as much as possible. Though, even with these dodgy looks having such a strong cast leads you to care for all the detectives in all the different eras. Kyle Soller, can I give you a special shout out and say you are killing it recently? You TOTALLY deserved that Peabody for Andor. Occasionally one era's storyline will pull you in a little more, hello again Kyle, and you're dying for them to go back to it but then something will happen in another time and then that's all you care about. It's a balancing act that, while occasionally frustrating, pays off in the end because everything comes together in a perfect bow. It's self-contained. It's a miniseries that draws you in, answers the questions, and leaves you satisfied but still hoping for a little more. But where it really got me is how easy it is to have the world just slide into Fascism. The Executive that controls Britain in the aftermath of the attack with the haunting motto "know you are loved" is too plausible. And what's sad is that at the heart of this horrible movement is just a lost boy who thought he was never loved. Maybe that's what's happening in America right now... All these people who've never felt loved just screaming into the void. But not realizing that violence, that Fascism, that control, isn't the answer. That isn't love. That will never be love. Repeating to yourself that you are loved while in some instances is self-affirming, here is delusional. A lonely boy wants love and fabricates it but with just the hint that it's an illusion everything falls apart. If only more things could be saved with a seed of doubt and a hug.
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