“Prepare the sacrifice!” It was only supposed to be a party, an initiation rite for new dance team members. But things get nuts in The Body, an 8-episode Netflix series from creator-writer Quinn Shephard.
The Body: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “Now you are Christ’s body, and every one of you is a part of it.” A priest intones scripture as teens take the Eucharist. The Body lingers on their mouths in close-up.
The Gist: It’s 2004, everything is bedazzled, and at St. Mark’s Catholic School, the power of Christ compels students to constantly be thinking about sex while guiltily staring at crucifixes. This is the charged environment of The Body, where we meet popular girls Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Elise (Sara Boustany) as they hold auditions for their dance team, The Lions. Grace (Sofia Wylie) surprises with her talent and moves — everybody thought she was just into God — while Lizzie (Geena Meszaros), with a homeschooling and fundamentalist background, yearns to impress and be included.
Coming-of-age themes crash into bad drug use decisions and a community ripe for fervor-twisting as controversy erupts around a wild party thrown by The Lions at Devil’s House, an abandoned (and haunted?) convent. The fallout involves injured students, confusion from Anya over her feelings for bff Elise, and perhaps an opportunity for Lizzie to find better footing with her new friends. She might have to turn her back on God and her upbringing, but what does religion really mean, anyway?
Dance is at the center of The Body. So are suspicions and ambitions, lots of backstabbing drama, and the supposed wonder of religious visions.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Body creator Quinn Shephard also made the gripping true crime drama Under the Bridge – Bridge star Riley Keough is an executive producer here.
Our Take: The Body centers early-2000s pop music as a place-setter, but also has fun agitating all those themes of outsized sex and love as applied to a narrative of choral music covers and instant messenger away messages. We could be wrong, but we don’t think anybody in this series is conjuring Satan or the divine – rather, we like how it’s messing with an interplay between the body of Christ, the bodies of its teenage characters, and how the forces governing both of those are confronted by confusion. The Body has a lot of potential to get fun and messy as its characters navigate fraught environments both public and personal.
Sex and Skin: Press materials keep using “raunchy” to describe The Body. You be the judge as there is lots of talk about sex, vibrators, and “butt stuff” as “God’s loophole.”
Parting Shot: After a traumatizing experience with Anya, Lizzie believes her chances of making the dance team are suddenly much brighter.
Sleeper Star: Kristina Boustany gives Anya the most grounding among the crew of dance teamers we meet in The Body. Boustany was similarly impressive at the center of the recent Playing Gracie Darling.
Most Pilot-y Line: “A.I.M.? My family doesn’t have a computer.” The Body amplifies its 2004 setting by centering AOL’s instant messenger service as part of its social strata.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Body promises Teens Doing Bad Things as its trucks with powerful forces of sexual awakening, religious indoctrination, and the emergence of widespread hysteria.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
