True crime is in fashion. Since 2022, audiovisual platforms are full of documentary series and fictions that tell real crimes. Also the spaces dedicated to podcast broadcasts, which are trending, are full of stories of murders and all kinds of violent deaths.
There has always been an interest in these types of stories, and although it seemed impossible to successfully combine the world of podcasts with that of real true crime, it seems that it has been achieved. This is Bodkin, a seven-episode fiction that premiered last Friday, May 10 on Netflix and has become one of the unexpected hits on the platform.
The series tells how a group of podcast hosts passionate about true crime investigate the mysterious disappearance of three strangers in an idyllic town near Cork, on the Irish coast. However, once they begin to tie up the loose ends, they discover a story much bigger and stranger than they imagined.
What few know is that this project is also Barack and Michelle Obama’s first foray into scripted television for the streaming platform.
Not as protagonists, but as executive producers from Higher Ground, the couple’s audiovisual company, which signed an agreement with the platform in 2018. All for a trip they took to Ireland in 2011, to visit the birthplace of the ex’s great-great-grandfather. president of the United States, where they fell in love with the country.
The series features three American podcasters – Gilbert (Saturday Night Live! comedian Will Forte), Dove (Siobhán Cullen) and Emmy (Robyn Cara) – who arrive in the small town of Bodkin to investigate a series of ritualized murders decades ago that They are already part of popular horror folklore and they consider it would be an exceptional topic for their true crime podcast.
Now, their investigations into a topic that seemed parked in time cause them to come across something more than a few extra pints of Guinness and discover that the topic is more alive than ever. An intelligent, funny series, torn between jokes and the sinister; with the viewer – and the protagonists – having to struggle to differentiate between reality and fiction.
A success that in its first weekend has already been compared to another popular series, Only Murders in the Building (Disney Plus). Black humor, drama and mystery in a production that will undoubtedly attract lovers of the genre.
Where the series has not been much liked is in Ireland itself, where it is believed that the clichés that have haunted the Irish for centuries are perpetuated. “Another fiction in the worst genre of all time: the Irish rural picaresque. The alcohol flows and the nuns frown,” they write in The Irish Times, where they describe Bodkin as a “deeply annoying” program where not only is there no criticism of clichés, but it increases them. “Let’s ignore it and hope it goes away.”
