We open, bright red Pulp Fiction-y letters tell us, on “Day Nine”. Not “Day One”! Intrigued? You betcha! We are in Los Tríos, Mexico – watching a woman watch the Mexican military police await delivery of nine bodies, to store in an isolated facility’s morgue. Which is fortuitous, because this is the beginning of a new thriller by Anthony Horowitz, called Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue (the title fits brilliantly). The series was originally developed for the short-form platform Quibi; but I thank whoever realised that this perfect piece of trash deserved a larger canvas and broader distribution, and gave it 45 minutes per episode (and, ultimately, to the BBC).
I don’t know that anything has given me greater or purer joy this year. Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue is unabashed nonsense, without a trace of cynicism or guile in a world stuffed to bursting with both. I offer my undying allegiance to its Agatha Christie-meets-Lost shenanigans.
To wit: eight days earlier (Day One), pilot Octavio Fuentes is flying Flight CBZ517 over the Mexican jungle, when he loses all comms with the ground. Now, he is flying Flight CBZ517 by dead reckoning – and the episode is called Dead Reckoning! But both “dead” and “reckoning” can have two meanings, so move a little closer to the edge of your seats and let your hopes rise. Octavio just has time to call someone with a semi-cryptic message about people not letting them live, before the plane crash-lands in the jungle, which is still in Mexico.
Fortunately, all the main characters survive. They have only their carry-on luggage and two traits apiece to help them survive until, they assume, rescue comes. There is spoilt rich girl, Amy (Jan Le), and her devoted new husband, blue collar Dan (Adam Long); brittle British woman, Sonja (Lydia Wilson); a fantastically miscast Siobhán McSweeney as Lisa, a southern Maga belle married to heart-medicine-dependent Travis (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson); the immensely cool and practical – even suspiciously so – purported claims adjustor, Zack (David Ajala). How many’s that? Six down, three to go.
There’s Carlos (Peter Gadiot), who is a luchador; a Mexican wrestling star who holds the camp spellbound with his speeches about how much he loves wrestling, what it means to be a luchador and the mystical significance of bouncing around a ring in a silver mask in pursuit of glory. There’s Will & Grace’s Eric McCormack as a cowardly former doctor, Kevin; and there is Octavio himself (Christian Contreras), who has somehow survived a tree crash-landing through his chest, Kevin and Zack yanking the tree out of his chest, being pulled to safety and then undergoing an unanaesthetised operation in the evening to relieve a tension pneumothorax. Kevin doesn’t want to do it (“If I try, I’ll kill him!”) – but in the end Kevin must (“He’ll die if you don’t!”). They boil and use 90% of their drinking water to prep, despite an earlier mention of tanks full of slightly lesser quality stuff stored in the plane that would have been perfect for the job. It is this kind of inattention to detail that I am so hugely here for.
A further example – the fact that no one stays with Octavio overnight. They just leave him, probably dying, while they kip elsewhere. Of course, this means that he can be killed by a shadowy figure emerging from the woods (no spoilers, but he is billed as The Figure in the cast list and played by Bradley J Ibrahim). The rest of the gang put it down to post-operative shock and remain unaware of the threat. Terrifically, whenever someone dies a row of yellow stick figures pops up in the corner of the screen; whereat, one turns red and is struck through with a cross. This is a top gimmick and I commend whoever’s brainchild it was.
Naturally, as time passes, tensions beyond the merely pulmonary arise as people try to hide rations, secrets and the fingers they’ve chopped off corpses to try to unlock their phones. The Figure merely adds to the growing uncertainty. “This is like some terrible nightmare!” says someone. I forget who. Just about anyone could be saying any of the lines. This is the genius of it. Meanwhile, the Guardia Nacional has retrieved 10 passports from the plane. Wait, what? But there are only nine bodies! Yes, and all unrecognisable due to the depredations wreaked by jungle temperatures and predators.
Who’s missing? Who dies next? Who’s the woman watching the police? Why can I not stop watching? Is it one-star fare or five? Or both? How can something so bad be so good? How can something so good be so bad? Tune in and do – or don’t – find out!
• Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
