True Detective Meets Science Fiction In Stephen Graham's 8-Part Netflix Series

Credit: MovieStillsDB Published Sep 16, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Stephen Graham's eight-episode miniseries on Netflix is a blend of True Detective and science fiction time-travel stories. True Detective did not change the way detective and mystery stories were told on TV, but it did reset the standard for what we all consider a "great" detective tale. The first season of that show is so undeniably good that any dark, atmospheric detective show that has come after it has always had to be compared to it. When you watch one of those shows, the question will always be, how good is it compared to True Detective? That's the barometer. Some TV shows like Bodies have tried their own twist on the genre, bringing in a science fiction element that sets it apart. However, even with its time travel shenanigans, it's still comparable to True Detective with its philosophical plot, angry characters, and murders that are not just inexplicable but particularly grisly. Bodies is set in four different time periods: 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053. On the same day of the calendar year in the same location in all four timelines, a dead body turns up, and four versions of the Metropolitan Police in the Whitechapel area of London begin to investigate the murder. The deeper they look into the mysterious death, the more the timelines become intertwined, resulting in a twisting tale that gets darker and stranger the deeper the audience goes into it. Bodies may reach quite the same heights as True Detective, but it offers something unique in the genre space. Bodies Merges Science Fiction And Detective Fiction Masterfully Credit: MovieStillsDB Bodies manages to merge its science fiction and detective fiction elements seamlessly. It never feels like we're watching a science fiction show with a few mystery elements thrown in, nor does it ever feel like we're watching a detective series with a gesture at science fiction concepts. Bodies makes an effort to juggle both the crime drama elements of the story as well as make an honest effort at explaining the complicated science fiction ideas that the story hangs on. It's not just the impossibility that confounds the detectives at the center of the show; the murder, even with no science fiction elements, presents a troubling and dark reality. In True Detective, the violence and horror at the center of the killings that Marty (Woody Harrelson) and Rust (Matthew McConaughey) investigate is a reflection of the darkness of humanity they've been forced to face or that they've inflicted. In Bodies, the murders and the time travel reflect a darkness about humanity as well, and both sides of the story say something different. Bodies Get Unfairly Compared To Dark Another show that you'll often hear Bodies compared to is Dark, the German time travel thriller from 2017, which is also available on Netflix. Like Bodies, Dark centers on time travel, with characters going to different periods but remaining in the same place, and dead bodies mysteriously appearing also feature heavily in Dark. They are very different shows, though. Dark is an internal show, exploring how characters think of themselves when they are forced to face ever-changing versions of themselves. Bodies is much more external, focused on the complications that time travel presents to something as murky and frightening as a murder case. Release Date 2023 - 2023-00-00 Showrunner Paul Tomalin Directors Marco Kreuzpainter, Haolu Wang Writers Paul Tomalin, Danusia Samal