Bodkin

That Oscar winner [Martin McDonagh] juggles humor and tragedy expertly, while this Higher Grounds Production (the Obamas production company) drops the ball occasionally on both. You won’t care since it’s the three central characters and the actors who portray them that pick them up and put them back up in the air and keep us engaged.

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

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.

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.

Plot points, including a mysterious death partway through, are lazily explained away. Heinous acts don’t match up with the characters who supposedly committed them. Identities are discovered and then go unexplored. With shoddy plotting and chaotic pacing, Bodkin falls far short of the thought-provoking satire that it aims for.