It has seemed at times over the past two decades that former President Barack Obama can do no wrong in the eyes of the media, but that recently changed in at least one regard.
A new Ireland-set Netflix series from Obama’s production company, “Bodkin,” has been sharply panned by media critics for presenting an overly clichéd and naive Americanized view of the Irish people and customs, according to the U.K.’s The Guardian.
Yet, the “dramedy” nonetheless received some praise for its compelling plotline about an Irish-American true-crime podcaster investigating an old murder mystery and his Irish roots alongside a British researcher and a reluctant and rude Irish-born London-based journalist assigned to escort them.
A “deeply annoying show” that is “adding to the stockpile” of Irish clichés
The Irish Times was perhaps the harshest in its panning of the first foray into a scripted drama series for the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions and their lucrative Netflix contract, which it described as “yet another entry in the worst genre ever — the Irish rural picaresque where booze flows, nuns scowl,” and everyone overly “enunciates” their Irish brogue.
“In keeping with the thoughtful and socially conscious Obama brand, it sets out to critique our obsession with true crime podcasts and to have fun with Americans and their misty-eyed vision of Ireland,” the review continued. “Yet while skewering Irish America, it indulges in plenty of stereotyping of its own and isn’t nearly as clever as it fancies itself.”
The reviewer also took aim at the show’s British writer, Jez Scharf, who spent time as a teenager in Ireland’s west Cork, and said of him, “A little knowledge truly is dangerous as he has populated his script with the standard rowdy, shifty, dysfunctional peasants who say ‘me’ instead of ‘my’ and swear as if paid by the f-bomb.”
In the end, The Irish Times lambasted “Bodkin” as a “deeply annoying show that thinks it is critiquing clichés about Ireland when actively adding to the stockpile. Let’s ignore it and hope it goes away.”
“More shamrock-laden clichés than you can shake a shillelagh at”
The review from the Irish Independent was a bit more mixed, as “Bodkin” was accused of descending into a “dark pit of paddywhackery,” primarily because it is “set in a West Cork coastal town with a funny-sounding name” and local inhabitants who “come across as the usual collection of colorful, folksy eccentrics and oddballs.”
“If this isn’t enough to set your Oirish bulls–t-detecting antennae twitching, then the fact that the animated opening titles feature a pint of Guinness, a nun, and a St Brigid’s Cross should be,” the review continued.
Yet, the reviewer added, “But wait — don’t run away, because ‘Bodkin’ is not what you might have feared. It’s clever, funny and properly gripping stuff: a deliciously offbeat concoction of the (intentionally) silly and the sinister that delights in setting up more shamrock-laden clichés than you can shake a shillelagh at and then gleefully shredding them.”
Watching series is like “playing Irish cliché bingo”
The Guardian’s review of “Bodkin” was a bit more positive, with the only real critique being that the series starts rather slow and “uninspiring” and takes a few episodes to fully develop its “groove” and characters and pacing.
It was described as “a darkly comic thriller shot through with whimsy; a show that clearly hopes to capture the vibe and success of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ and occasionally succeeds. That it doesn’t ever quite catch fire in the same way as that highly idiosyncratic show is unfortunate, if predictable, but not fatal to enjoyment.”
Likewise, The Guardian noted that the U.K.’s The Times praised the cast’s performances but downplayed the script as being “fine and often witty but that little about the characters or plot rang true.”
In the end, the new Netflix series from the Obamas “feels too — what’s the word? — cartoonish, as if we were playing Irish cliché bingo. Everything is thrown into the mix and the resulting pie is uneven, with some parts tastier than others.”
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Author: Ben Marquis
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