Impossible Bodies and Dark’s Mysterious Letter: 7 Netflix Mystery Shows Hook Viewers From the First Scene

A body across four eras

Bodies, created by Paul Tomalin and based on a DC Vertigo graphic novel, is an eight-episode science-fiction mystery thriller. Four detectives in different eras investigate the same unidentified body in a London alley, then discover their cases are connected to a conspiracy spanning a century.

The opening follows Detective Sergeant Shahara Hasan, played by Amaka Okafor, as she pursues an armed teenager from a far-right protest into Whitechapel. On Longharvest Lane, she finds a naked man with a gunshot wound to the eye. The body gasps out a frightening statement and bolts, turning a murder inquiry into something far stranger.

Dark begins with dread

The German series Dark, created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, centers on four interconnected families in Winden. A child’s disappearance exposes a time-travel conspiracy that links 1953, 1986 and 2019, trapping characters in a loop of fate and cause and effect.

Its first scene pairs a voice-over about time being an illusion with images of clocks and an investigation board. The story then moves to November 19, 2019, when Michael Kahnwald, played by Sebastian Rudolph, seals a letter marked, “Do not open before November 4th at 10:13 p.m.” He looks at a family photograph and dies by suicide, setting a stark tone for the mysteries ahead.

Mindhunter appears in the material

The material also includes captions identifying Mindhunter characters Jonathan Groff, Anna Torv and Holt McCallany. The captions describe FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench interviewing an obscured criminal and showing someone a crime-scene photograph. However, it provides no narrative description of Mindhunter’s opening scene or further details about its mystery.