Four detectives. Four time periods. One murder.

Netflix’s ambitious new series Bodies starts with the discovery of an apparent homicide victim on a London street in 2023. DS Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor), who’s meant to be policing a protest, makes the gruesome find but loses the prime suspect.

It’s when Hasan starts to investigate, though, that she runs into real trouble. It turns out this exact same body has been found in the exact same place before, and will be again. As each of the detectives across the timeliness works to solve the case, the mystery grows deeper and the stakes get higher.

It’s a startlingly original whodunnit, with a big dollop of period drama stylings, underpinned by some inventive sci-fi ideas – all in all, an ultra-intriguing drama on an impressive scale with something for everyone to enjoy! Here’s a look at this mind-bending series…

Who and what connects the threads? Elias Mannix may have some answers. An unscrupulous politician who founded an authoritarian organisation known as The Executive, he seems to know more about the situation than anyone – so does this make him a suspect?

Mannix is played by one of the most popular and in-demand British actors around, Stephen Graham, star of everything from This Is England, Line Of Duty and prison drama Time on TV to two Pirates Of The Caribbean films, Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Graham also appeared in the huge hit crime drama Peaky Blinders, and three of that show’s producers – Will Gould, Matthew Read and Frith Tiplady – are behind this new series, in a mark of its quality. It’s written by Paul Tomalin, formerly a writer on No Offence and Torchwood, based on the mind-blowing and unsettling graphic novel by the late Si Spencer.

Read on to find out more about the cast in the various time periods of Bodies.

When is Bodies on Netflix?

The eight-part drama Bodies will be available in Apps & Games > Netflix from Thursday 19 October.

In 1890, Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) – a detective inspector who plays by the newly established rules of policing – is the first to discover the body on Longharvest Lane in London’s East End.

Where do I know him from? The American-born Soller went to drama school in London and does a thoroughly convincing English accent, which he displayed previously when playing Ross Poldark’s cousin Francis in the first two series of Poldark (available in Apps & Games > Netflix). He’s primarily a theatre actor – he won an Olivier Award for Best Actor in The Inheritance – but can also be seen in the 2012 film Anna Karenina and in Andor (Apps & Games > Disney+).

Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), a less by-the-book detective in wartime London, finds the victim all over again on the same Whitechapel street in 1941.

Where do I know him from? Fortune-Lloyd has had a big year with appearances in season 3 of The Great (Box Sets > LIONSGATE+), The Power (Apps & Games > Prime Video) and the newest movie version of The Three Musketeers. He’s also starred in another mid-20th-century detective story, although one with a very different tone: See How They Run with Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell (Apps & Games > Disney+).

Amaka Okafor is present-day detective sergeant Shahara Hasan, who pursues an armed suspect into a back street and finds him standing over a naked dead body. It is only after he flees that she realises she never heard the gun being fired.

Where do I know her from? Okafor has appeared in dramas on the BBC (The Responder, The Split, Apps & Games > BBC iPlayer) and ITV (Des, Grace, Apps & Games > ITVX) but her biggest role before this came in the 2023 musical movie based on the songs of Take That, Greatest Day.

It’s 2053 – you can tell by those classic 2050s haircuts – and police detective Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) has stumbled across the corpse for a fourth time. WHAT IS GOING ON? Perhaps quantum gravity theory, aka time travel, can provide some answers.

Where do I know her from? Haas is best known for the acclaimed Netflix drama Unorthodox, playing a young woman fleeing the restrictions of her ultra-religious community. She also starred in Second World War drama The Zookeeper’s Wife alongside Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and will be seen in next year’s superhero movie Captain America: Brave New World.

When is Bodies on Netflix?

You can see Stephen Graham, Amana Okafor, Shira Haas, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Kyle Soller in Bodies when the eight-part drama is released in Apps & Games > Netflix on Thursday 19 October.