Bodkin

Created by Jez Scharf, “Bodkin” represents a low-key addition to that slate, but still makes for a passable binge; still, what looks like a distinctive show gradually blends into its saturated genre – less a commentary on true-crime podcasts than a reminder that even with series that start out well, there’s not always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It gains in pace, charm (and in dead bodies) and that first hour turns out to be an investment worth making.

Writer Jez Scharf throws everything at the wall with absurdist relish, including secret children, sensationally negligent policing, yoga nuns, server farms, Semtex and eels. Not all, but a good deal of it, sticks.

One of the big problems with “Bodkin” is that it hardly adds up to much. All of the investigation goes to some absurd places, and I don’t think that was intentional. And there are plot holes galore along the way. The denouement, incomplete and hard to believe, may test your patience.

The series is a tricky balance of tones and ideas that works at some times, but not at others. And its own interest in the mystery of what happened that night of the Samhain festival comes and goes. But many of the performers do interesting and appealing work.

I kept waiting for the series (from Jez Scharf, who is showrunner with Alex Metcalf) to find its narrative footing, but it lacks the kind of methodical unraveling needed to sustain interest. The cast of characters remain undeveloped beyond their surface-level tropes.

Superficially, “Bodkin” has all the makings of a treat — there are plenty of snazzy one-liners and touching reveries as well as some fresh and inventive violence. Many of its twists do work, and there is plenty to critique about the true-crime industry and its mawkishness. .... But as with many true-crime podcasts, all these evocative elements together amount to a story that is ultimately unsatisfying.

It’s not effective true crime, nor is it an effective censure of true crime. It’s somewhere in between, and that doesn’t really serve anyone. The true-crime genre certainly has its pitfalls, but it deserves sharper analysis than this.