Netflix’s Wednesday line-up has a mischievous streak. The Body, an eight-episode series from Quinn Shephard, premieres on November 11, and its premise sounds like a sleepover dare that got wildly out of hand.
The setup
The story begins on Halloween night in 2004 and centres on the Lions, the dance team of a Catholic girls’ school. Captains Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Elise (Sara Boustany) put their newest recruit, Grace (Sofia Wylie), through an initiation ritual that is supposed to be a joke. It is not taken as one by fate: the girls begin having prophetic visions, a frenzy spreads through their small town, and the team suddenly has a very big secret to keep. As Netflix’s logline puts it, everyone ends up asking the same question: what happened to Grace?
“Gritty camp”
Shephard, who previously made the Emmy-nominated mystery Under the Bridge, describes the tone as “gritty camp” and “a raunchy teen psychodrama with a dash of Catholic horror.” She has called it her most personal project and cites teen classics and thrillers such as Carrie, Jennifer’s Body, Heavenly Creatures and Mean Girls, plus a teenage obsession with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, as inspirations. She also stresses that the show can be funny, sad and spooky in the same breath.
Who’s in it
Alongside Bogic, Boustany and Wylie, the ensemble includes Geena Meszaros, Shirley Chen, Jackson Kelly, Louisa Krause and Nnamdi Asomugha. The Traitors winner Gabby Windey plays the team’s coach. Riley Keough is among the executive producers through her company Felix Culpa.
The phone-free 2004 setting is part of the fun: no smartphones, plenty of mixtapes-and-gossip energy, and a reminder that rumours travelled just fine without social media. Critic scores were still pending at launch, so this one is a genuine first-weekend discovery.