Netflix’s 8-Part Sci-Fi Sleeper Hit Is Anchored by a Masterclass Performance
Netflix's 2023 sci-fi mystery series "Bodies" is being highlighted as an underrated showcase for actor Kyle Soller, best known to genre fans as Syril Karn in "Andor". While Soller's Star Wars role is defined by obsessive rigidity and eventual downfall, his turn as Victorian-era Detective Inspector Alfred Hillinghead in "Bodies" reveals a more vulnerable, emotionally exposed side of his acting range, making the show a worthwhile watch for those who admired his work in "Andor".
"Bodies", an eight-episode adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, follows detectives across four different time periods — 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053 — who each discover the same unidentified body in the exact same location. Their parallel investigations gradually converge on a centuries-spanning conspiracy involving a man, Elias Mannix, who appears to exist across all four eras. Soller's Hillinghead leads the 1890 storyline, torn between his devotion to his family and his growing entanglement with a reporter, all while confronting police corruption and blackmail, a performance singled out as the emotional core of the series.
- Kyle Soller of "Andor" also stars in Netflix's "Bodies".
- The series follows a mystery body found across four time periods.
- Soller's Victorian detective role is praised as deeply emotional.
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Bodies is a 2023 Netflix series that tells one mystery across four different time periods – 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053 – with a different detective in each era discovering the same unidentified body in the exact same London location. Over its eight episodes, the separate investigations slowly knit together into a single conspiracy spanning more than a century, centred on a mysterious figure called Elias Mannix who appears to exist in all four timelines. The series is based on a graphic novel of the same name.
Actor Kyle Soller plays Detective Inspector Alfred Hillinghead, who leads the 1890 strand of the story. Soller is better known to some viewers for playing Syril Karn, a rigid and ultimately doomed company man, in the Star Wars series Andor, but his role here is quite different: Hillinghead is a more vulnerable character, caught between loyalty to his family and a dangerous relationship with a journalist, while also dealing with corruption within the police.
The renewed attention on Bodies centres on Soller's performance as a standout element of the show, offering a contrast to the role that made him familiar to many viewers.