With The Sandman currently on hiatus due to the strikes and Dead Boy Detectives still awaiting a release date following its acquisition from Warner Bros., Netflix has gone ahead and stealthily expanded its DC Universe without a lot of people realizing after Bodies dropped on the platform this week.
Adapted from the property of the same name created by Si Spencer, the limited series ticks one of the streaming service’s favorite boxes by revolving around a murder, except there’s a mind-bending twist. Hopping between time periods, the story focuses on the exact same body being discovered in the exact same location in 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053, with a conspiracy rearing its head that places one enigmatic figure squarely in the middle.
Even if it wasn’t a comic book adaptation, the easily-marketable hook of Bodies and the sheen that comes from its status as an expensive Netflix original were always going to guarantee it a place as one of the most-watched titles on the entire content library from the second it was made available, so there’s no surprises to be found after it made a strong debut.
Per FlixPatrol, the centuries-spanning untangling of the mystery behind a single dead body tore a hole in fabric of the viewership continuum, cracking the Top 10 in 78 countries around the world to land as the fourth-biggest episodic project available to subscribers worldwide.
Perfectly engineered to be binged in a couple of sittings, Netflix has once again taken the humble murder mystery and transformed it into an all-conquering sensation.