Stephen Graham had brutal approach to rewriting scripts in new Netflix series Bodies

Stephen Graham was ruthless in his editing of the script ahead of his role in the new Netflix series Bodies, the showrunner has said.

Here's the trailer, take a look for yourself.

Graham stars in the eight-part time-travel crime thriller, which released onto the streaming platform yesterday, and clearly had some notes on the script before he actually committed any of it to film.

That’s not to say it was bad, but it seems as if Graham had ways that things could be made more concise and said with less words.

Well, according to Paul Tomalin, who created the show, anyway.

The man behind the series – which has been critically acclaimed and seems set to be a big hit – isn’t exactly annoyed about the changes made, either.

In fact, he seems to have appreciated the clarity what Graham brought to proceedings.

Netflix

Tomalin, who has worked on shows like Shameless and Torchwood before now, told the Daily Express: “His script notes were wonderful.

“He was so precise.

“I have a tendency to write lots of long speeches, lots of dialogue, and he’d come back with these laser red lines.”

Likening Graham to another actor – some true Hollywood royalty – Tomalin continued: “It was kind of like Clint Eastwood stripping away dialogue from cowboy movies.

“He was just like, ‘Nope! Nope! Nope! Just that’.”

Eventually, it seems as if Graham – star of Time, Boiling Point, and Boardwalk Empire, among many others – got his way.

“There was very little back and forth,” Tomalin said.

“It was like, ‘You know what? He’s right.'

“And what he was able to find… I can’t go into the twists, but he would find consistencies from let us say an old self and a new self that would emerge at key dramatic moments.

“And that’s fascinating to reveal when he does it. In episode eight it really happens. There are two sides to him.

“Not Jekyll and Hyde, or anything like that, but there’s the vulnerable side, the true side. And there’s this, kind of, imperious, political character.

“The way he lets those fragments reveal themselves is very well thought out.”

Netflix

In the series, Graham plays a near-future political figure, who is involved in an investigation that spans many different time periods.

Without getting too far into it – because spoilers are never that far away – it involves four detectives uncovering a mystery that spans a 150 year time period.

There could be more to it than that, but you’ll have to watch it for yourself to find out what happens.

We’re not going to tell you.

All episodes of Bodies are available to watch on Netflix now.