Bodkin Season 1

What BollyAI Thinks

Bodkin premiered May 9, 2024 as a Netflix Irish black comedy created by Jez Scharf. Will Forte plays Gilbert Power, an American podcaster who travels to the Irish coastal village of Bodkin to investigate the 30-year-old disappearance of three people during a Samhain festival. He is joined by an Irish investigative journalist (Siobhan Cullen) and a researcher (Robyn Cara). Critics approved at 68 percent from 40 reviews, crediting the show's satirical edge on true-crime media consumption and the distinct eccentricity of its Irish setting and characters. The consensus reservation - that the underlying mystery is too thin to sustain seven episodes - was repeated across multiple reviews. The show is more interested in its satirical mode than its genre mechanics, which is either a strength or a limitation.

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The Room

Standout Episodes

The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.

1. E1Part One: American in Ireland7.2

   Bodkin's Netflix premiere drops an unlikely investigative trio - an American true crime podcaster, her reluctant Irish researcher, and a local journalist - into a small Irish coastal town to investigate a decades-old disappearance. The episode's comedy is dry and character-driven, Siobhán Cullen's Dove and Will Forte's Gilbert as an investigative pairing whose mutual irritation is the show's main comic engine.

   The moment: Gilbert's first encounter with the Bodkin locals and his complete failure to understand the social codes of the small Irish community he's investigating - the fish-out-of-water dynamic that the episode establishes as the series' central comic register.

   Full review of E1 →