What do these Netflix shows all have in common? The Midnight Club and The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, Lockwood & Co, 1899?
Aside from an ardent audience, the dramas have all succumbed to the TV industry’s most dreaded ailment: the so-called Netflix curse.
For the uninitiated, the worldwide streamer has a reputation for abruptly cancelling series after only one season, with no regard for outraged viewers who are frequently left with unresolved cliffhangers.
Bodies, a time-traveling thriller with a cast led by veteran actor Stephen Graham and developed by Paul Tomalin, enters this competitive market.
But Paul, who has also written for No Offence, Shameless, and Torchwood, isn’t concerned about the Netflix ‘curse’ because his eight-parter was designed and promoted as a ‘one and done.’
‘When you have gangbuster notions up front like this, it’s sort of criminal to keep them dangling along,’ he added.
‘To actually be able to cook it, bake it, and hand it over to the audience at the end is rare these days because everybody’s trying to string it out.
‘So we’re not going to fall victim to the Netflix second series season curse because it’s not part of the offer.’
But Paul clarified that a season 2 wasn’t totally off-limits. ‘Now if it’s a massive hit, and people are knocking on Netflix’s door for a sequel we’d be, “Hmm, okay” because there are questions left answered. And what we did was we left a very cute dot dot dot at the end of it just in case,’ he added.
The series Bodies follows four detectives, Hasan (Amaka Oskafor), Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), Hillinghead (Soller), and Maplewood (Haas), as they investigate an odd case.
The cops are all looking into the death of an unnamed individual who was discovered nude on a London street, murdered by a single gunshot to the eye but with no exit wound. Oh, and the investigators are from four different eras, ranging from 1890 to 2053.
It’s Paul’s first time as a showrunner – he described the idea as being formed out of ‘panic and self-doubt’ – and he never anticipated to land Stephen, who was at the top of his wish list.
Explaining why he never thought the Time actor, 50, would say yes, Paul said: ‘I’d read previously that Stephen Graham set up his production companies that want to do relatable stories.
‘And then, I’m like “Hi, Steven, here’s a story set in the future. You’re going to be going everywhere. Do you want to do something that might register as utterly daft?”
‘But it didn’t and he read it and loved the script. He responded to its themes. I think he says that it’s a kind of beautiful madness and that’s exactly actually the phrase for it.’
Bodies is available to stream on Netflix.
