"Know you are loved."note
"We are one another's ghosts of past, present, and future. It's hard to grasp, isn't it?"
— Julian Harker
Bodies is a 2023 British crime thriller/science-fiction series written and created by Paul Tomalin (Torchwood, Shameless, The Frankenstein Chronicles), based on the comic and graphic novel by Si Spencer. The limited series premiered on Netflix on October 19, 2023.
It follows the stories of detectives Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor), Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller), and Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas), all of whom are from different time periods, yet discover the same body "naked as the day he was born". As they each look into this mysterious occurrence, a conspiracy that threatens Britain's future is slowly revealed.
Not to be confused with Bodies (2004), a BBC medical drama of the same title which ran from 2004 to 2006.
Tropes:
- The '40s: The period feel of WWII Britain is evoked in the Whiteman sequences.
- Adaptation Deviation:
- In the comic, 2050s London is in ruins after a mysterious 'pulse wave' scrambled the brains of its residents. Here, it's a polished and high-technology dystopia.
- In the comic, the mysterious corpses are due to a mysterious immortal pulling the strings throughout history; while here, they're due to time travel.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Barber is not as flirtatious towards Hasan as he is in the comic. Though he still displays an excess amount of concern for her as part of his manipulations, their relationship is much more professional.
- Amnesiac Resonance: Implied in the ending montage, which features the characters in the Golden Timeline seeming to subtly recognize and act kinder to one another even though the loop has been broken.
- Anyone Can Die: Until the loop is dissolved, plenty of named characters come to die, among them Hillinghead and Whiteman, who both get two different death scenes each, and Defoe, who thanks to being shot while time travelling manages to appear as a corpse four times, leading to the eponymous bodies.
- Arc Words: The phrase "Know you are loved" recurs in each storyline, most prominently as the slogan of the controlling government in 2053.
- Asshole Victim: When Whiteman needs someone to take the fall for the body, he kills a violent rapist who was recently released from prison, and plants his fingerprints in the car. It was cold-blooded murder, but he clearly picked a victim he wouldn't feel too bad about.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The shot after 2023 London is devastated by a nuclear bomb seems to return to 1890, focusing on Defoe's body... Then a cut reveals it to be Mannix, in 1889.
- Sarah answers the door as Hasan calls for her, just as in the sixth episode, but the 2053 version of Hasan is seen on the doorstep instead.
- Beautiful Dreamer: When Hillinghead wakes up in Henry Ashe's home after being drugged, he finds the photographer asleep in his back after he got him to sleep and takes a few moments to admire him. Then, Henry wakes up and the two have Their First Time.
- Can't Take Anything with You: How time travel works in this setting, with no particular explanation, spitting the traveler out naked. This sets up the initial mystery when the body of someone who's been shot in the head shows up in different times with no bullet for pathologists to extract, and functions much to Iris Maplewood's dismay, as her futuristic mobility aid is left behind when she travels.
- Cassandra Truth: Hillinghead initially disbelieves Maplewood's story about being from the future, and suspects her of being Mannix's spy, but eventually comes around.
- Connected All Along:
- DCI Barber, of all people, is Elias' biological father. And his great-grandson.
- He doesn't know it for most of the show, but Hillinghead is actually Harker's/Mannix's ancestor.
- The Coroner: The police station in 1890 employs a middle-aged, mildly eccentric, somewhat desensitized pathologist who almost seems to deliberately invoke the trope; when he finds something scary, it's Serious Business. Eventually, it turns out that he is a member of the conspiracy.
- Delayed Ripple Effect: Once the loop is broken, Elias is the first to disappear, followed by Hasan's future self, followed by a hard reset of the timeline.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: 1890 and 1941 London are not as progressive towards minorities as 2023 and 2053 London. In 1890, Hillinghead has to hide his homosexuality and Maplewood is treated as a useless "cripple" after time traveling there; while in 1941 Whiteman has to endure antisemitism from his superior.
- Didn't Think This Through: The 2053 characters are fully aware of the Can't Take Anything with You rule applying to time travel, and yet Maplewood seemingly fails to realise that she will lose her mobility aid.
- Dirty Cop:
- Hillinghead, Whiteman and Hasan discover that some of their fellow police officers are actually part of the conspiracy.
- Farrell, the inspector who first antagonizes Whiteman with antisemitic remarks, and then pulls him over while investigating an unrelated smuggling operation asks to be dealt in, instead of reporting it.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The protagonists are put through the wringer until the loop is dismantled. Hasan fails to save Syed Tahir, cannot stop Elias from detonating the bomb which ends up killing half a million people, loses her father and young son, and is unable to stop Mannix from going back in time to start the loop thirty years later. Maplewood initially helps Mannix, believing that she is protecting the people of her own era, and kills Defoe, seemingly destroying their chance to reverse the catastrophic explosion in 2023. Hillinghead confesses to Defoe's killing to protect Henry, has his reputation destroyed by being arrested as a murderer and outed as gay, and is killed by the conspiracy to keep him from sabotaging Harker's/Mannix's marriage to Polly. And Whiteman cannot save Esther, shoots Polly and Mannix in revenge, and gets hanged for their murder without being able to really damage the cult's efforts. It's only after these events that Maplewood figures out a way they might actually be able to stop Mannix after all.
- The End... Or Is It?: The show ends with the time loop and conspiracy seemingly undone... but Hasan's taxi driver in her last scene turns out to be Maplewood, who addresses her as "Shahara", and the closing shot of the London skyline shows a billboard reading "Know You Are Loved".
- Eye Scream: The titular body has a gunshot in the left eye - but no bullet or exit. It received it when Iris Maplewood shot Defoe as he was using the time machine. In 2053, Maplewood deduces Defoe will reappear four days later and she and Hasan are there to rescue him. Defoe subsequently wears an eyepatch in that timeline.
- Film Noir: The scenes set in the 1940s, with their shadowy lighting and pervasive corruption, seem designed to be Noir-ish.
- First-Episode Twist: Iris Maplewood and the 2053 timeline aren’t introduced until the end of the pilot.
- Foreshadowing: Elias' recurring dream of the young boy he has to kill whom he comforts while telling him he has to die, ends up becoming reality with Older Elias confessing to his younger self that they were always manipulated, and that the right thing to do is not to ignite the bomb, saving half a million people, but also erasing their own existence.
- Genre Roulette: The show switches between classic mystery, noir, thriller, and sci-fi, depending on which detective is the focus.
- Hardboiled Detective: Charles Whiteman has shades of this.
- He Knows Too Much: Hillinghead, DI Calloway and Esther all get killed for this. Henry Ashe can escape despite knowing too much, but only because Hillinghead sacrifices himself for him (and gets him to leave before the cult can get to him, anyway.)
- Heroic Sacrifice: The need for personal sacrifices is a theme in the series. These are decided upon by the four police officers, in direct contrast to Mannix's need to sacrifice others for his own survival.
- Hillinghead lets himself get framed for the murder of the body in Longharvest Lane to protect Henry Ashe.
- Maplewood travels back to 1890 to stop Mannix, knowing that there is no method of returning.
- Whitehead lets himself be killed in the revised timeline to hide Mannix's last recording in the coppers' pub Shahara frequented.
- Shahara spends thirty years of her life trying to stop Mannix's rise to power. She travels back in time herself to convince Elias not to detonate the bomb, even if it means erasing herself from the timeline.
- Elias chooses to perform this himself once his guilt and regrets finally come to light, recording a secret final message for his younger self, asking him to not detonate the bomb, and sacrifice their wants for others.
- Hyperlink Story: The main premise is that the murders in each time period are all deeply connected, and characters eventually reappear outside the first storyline they were introduced in to push the time loop along.
- Hope Spot: At the end of episode 6, Hasan appears to have stopped Elias from detonating the devastating bomb that we know kills hundreds of thousands of people and turns Britain into an authoritarian junta. Except she upsets him by bringing him to his biological mother's house, and he triggers a previously hidden backup detonator when he leaves...boom.
- Innocent Bigot: Hillinghead and PC Byrne, who are both among the more kind and socially conscious members of the Victorian era police force, consistently refer to the paralyzed Maplewood as a "cripple".
- La Résistance: In 2053, the Chapel Perilous is working against the quasi-fascist state, and has many of the trappings of a classic resistance movement — although their primary concerns are stranger than usual for such a group.
- Meaningful Background Event: In Whiteman's final timeline, he walks past a line of posters advertising a piano concert given by Polly Hillinghead.
- Meaningful Echo: Whiteman repeats Mannix's "One good thing" statement to himself before his Suicide by Cop.
- Minority Police Officer: A plot element, to varying degrees, for all four detectives. Hillinghead’s repressed homosexuality leaves him vulnerable to blackmail, while Whiteman is taunted with antisemitic slurs by a colleague and Hasan’s superiors ask her to use her status as a Muslim woman to earn trust from Syed's sister, who is also Muslim. Maplewood, finally, suffers from a genetic condition that leaves her partially paralyzed and unable to walk without a technological aid, which is strongly implied to have influenced her decision to support the authoritarian order of her time (which provides such aids — to its loyal servants and supporters).
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Nearly said word-for-word by Harker moments before Whiteman executes him, knowing his younger self will be born to repeat the time loop.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Harker tries to win over Hillinghead to the conspiracy's side both by blackmail and by trying to convince him that they both had to lie and hide their true nature to survive. Hillinghead isn't persuaded, which leads to his death.
- Pet Positive Identification: The only one in the Harker household who is not either willfully ignoring that Julian Harker is markedly different when he miraculously returns after being declared dead or forced to quietly accept this is his loyal dog, Archie. It's implied, that this might not end well for Archie, who appears to be no longer around later on.
- Police Procedural: All four settings, but especially the 2023 scenes, start with the air of a police procedural, before events rapidly take a turn for the weird.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Some of the detectives' senior officers fit this pattern, while others avert or subvert the trope.
- Hillinghead's superintendent, Paxman is an active member of Harker's cult, and even rats Hillinghead out to Harker in the first place. He also displays great disdain for Hillinghead's attempts to introduce more modern policing methods, making him, in Harker's words, only good for serving tea.
- Whiteman's superior, DI Calloway is reasonable throughout, being willing to listen to Whiteman even after he confesses to framing Cozens and killing the policeman on his trail, and trying to arrest both Whiteman and Polly Harker for their crimes.
- Hasan's boss, DCI Barber seems to be very reasonable, but ultimately it turns out that all his decisions were made in service to the cult he grew up in.
- Maplewood's superior officer obstructs her attempts to solve the case at every turn, and appears to be completely in the Executive's pocket. Then Mannix becomes involved directly, and orders her to pursue the matter — but very much for his own reasons.
- Redemption Equals Death:
- Whiteman decides to take down the conspiracy and ends up being killed for it.
- Mannix allows himself to be killed by Whiteman in the revised timeline after instructing him to make sure his final recording reaches his younger self in the future, knowing that it will lead to the nuclear future being averted, but also his own existence being erased.
- Ret-Gone: At the end: All of Mannix' descendants, including himself, vanish when the loop is undone.
- The Reveal: Episode 5 is pretty much a sequence of reveals. Up until then, the series has mostly been dropping clues and broad hints, but now things are made explicit. Maplewood meets the Chapel Perilous, and in one classic reveal sequence, the viewers learn that they are led by the older Hasan — who then reveals the nature of the conspiracy's plot. Mannix tells Hillinghead that he'll tell him the full truth, though actually he reveals relatively little. In 2023, Hasan discovers who Mannix's father is, thus revealing more about the conspiracy's extent and influence, and in the '40s, Whiteman learns something similar.
- Rewatch Bonus: At Lady Harker's sèance, the sceptical Hillinghead is pushed to chose a spirit to question. He requests the man murdered in Longharvest Lane, and asks for his name and who killed him, if it was Harker. The spirit spells his name — Defoe, and denies that he was shot by Harker. When Alfred then angrily demands to know who did it, the spirit begins to spell MA, which the viewer at this point believes is going to end up as Mannix, Harker's actual identity, but which someone who has seen the whole series knows was going to be Maplewood.
- Sadistic Choice: Hillinghead is given the choice of framing his lover for murder and sending him to the gallows or being outed as gay and framed for the crime.
- Sleep Cute: After being drugged at Harker's estate, Hillinghead manages to make his way back to Henry Ashe's home. When he sees he's still suffering from the drug's effects, the photographer sets a bed and gets him in there, stilll dressed. Before falling asleep, Hillinghead begs Henry to stay with him, leading Henry to fall asleep holding the detective.
- The Slow Path:
- After Hasan fails to stop the conspiracy she lives for another 30 years till she meets Dafoe and Maplewood and has another shot at stopping Mannix.
- After killing Hillinghead, Mannix lives for another 50 years so he can meet Whiteman.
- Whiteman hides Mannix's final recording in a cop bar where it stays hidden for 83 years and is found by Hasan.
- Spooky Séance: Hillinghead attends one in Episode 3 to secretly collect evidence. While it initially seems like he might gain some actual information about the murder, from the alleged spirit no less, the situation ends up a lot more dangerous when Alfred realizes he has been drugged.
- Stable Time Loop: As the episodes go on, a time loop is slowly revealed to the audience: Elias detonates the bomb in 2023, takes power and becomes commander until 2053, at which point he travels back to 1890 and manipulates events (including siring his own grandfather) via a cult to ensure that the explosion comes to pass. The ending reveals that the loop can be broken — if manipulated outside of the loop (i.e. by sending another person back in time after Mannix left).note
- Talking the Monster to Death: Done twice over in the finale. After a time-travelling Maplewood meets Hillinghead and tells him about Harker/Mannix, Hillinghead tells Mannix that he knows the truth, that everything Elias has done was based on a lie and that he will die alone and unloved. While it doesn't immediately convince him, it does plant a seed of doubt in the man's mind, and on his deathbed he realises that Hillinghead was right and makes another recording for his younger self, admitting the truth to him and telling him that the bombing won't help him. This, combined with the older Hasan finally convincing Sarah to show her son the love he desperately seeks, persuades him not to go through with it.
- Thanatos Gambit: Many of the conspiracy members willingly go to their deaths because doing so will advance the conspiracy's goals.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the comic, Esther is Whiteman's niece, and his hand in her death haunts him throughout his storyline. Here she's an unrelated street urchin in his storyline, and his desperation to save her is a character turning point.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- Sarah's refusal to see Elias before he's carted off to jail directly results in him triggering the nuclear bomb, at least in the original timeline.
- Polly asking Julian Harker to be allowed to tell her father about their connection leads to Hillinghead getting murdered on Harker's/Mannix' orders since Mannix realizes he will tell Polly what Harker has done. However, this also gives the detectives the opportunity to have Hillinghead plant a seed of doubt in Mannix's mind about his plan succeeding, making Polly also a Spanner in the Works for the conspiracy.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Alfred Hillinghead, the very picture of a married middle-class Victorian, who is so far in the closet that he could probably find Narnia, falls in love with Henry Ashe, an outspoken, lower class journalist, who is so outrageous by Victorian standards that he doesn't even wear a hat.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: The excuse the cult uses for everything from messing with people's lives to mass murder.
- Victorian London: DI Alfred Hillinghead covers the Whitechapel beat in 1890.
