Some I enjoy

Omnibus! With Ken Jennings and John Roderick

In the genre of two-blokes-talking-about-shit, the extempore king is John Roderick. In this twice-weekly podcast, he sits with his friend, Jeopardy record-breaker Ken Jennings, and talks about a random collection of subjects. Come for the discussion on Albanian Bunkers or The Fourth Crusade, and stay for the joyful digressions and lame jokes.

Fortunately… with Fi and Jane

There’s not much I miss about listening to BBC Radio, but I mourned the loss of Jane Garvey and Fi Glover from Five Live, back in the day. The station, frankly, was never the same again. You try to like Nicky Campbell and Victoria Derbyshire, but you just can’t. Even that reference dates me. Anyway, two of the finest radio voices have an excellent podcast, which is currently number one in the genre of two-women-talking-about-shit. My only criticism is that it’s too short. It’s a podcast, it can be longer.

Heavyweight (Gimlet)

I’ve still not quite forgiven Gimlet for cancelling the excellent Mystery Show podcast, but I grudgingly return to the network because I enjoy this. The title means nothing, the theme song is irritating, and the production style is PBS lite, but it is entertaining nonetheless. Jonathan Goldstein is very funny, and he joins a number of people who want to revisit moments from their past and put things right. Sometimes it labours the point, but it can also often be poignant as well as sweet, and the one-liners are often laugh-out-loud funny.

Serial (season 3)

This was a return to relevance and form, after the lacklustre season 2. This year, they spent a lot of time examining the justice system in Cleveland, Ohio. If you didn’t already know America was broken, this ought to convince you. Just nuke the whole site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

The Teacher’s Pet

Now. There are way too many podcasts about women being abducted and murdered. Way too many. That said, the dogged reporting here about Lyn Dawson’s disappearance from the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, over 35 years ago, is fascinating and horrifying. It’s not just about the possibly murdered wife of a popular rugby player and high school teacher, but about the culture of casual exploitation of teenagers by their teachers in the Sydney school system. Your jaw will drop in astonishment (and I do not use that word lightly). The show is produced quite well. It labours the point a bit, and gets repetitive (a lot), but I get it: the police and public prosecutors needed the pressure. Oh, and Australia? Broken.

And some I’ve given up on

Up and Vanished

I gave up on this because I needed to listen to fewer podcasts about missing, possibly murdered women. Season 2 of Up and Vanished was about the case of Kristal Reisinger, who went missing from Crestone, Colorado in 2016. Partly, this is a brilliant advertisement for not legalising weed: almost every person who gets interviewed seems to be a totally fucked up stoner waste of space. Partly, this is another reminder that America is broken. When you hear about the local police and who they are and what they have to deal with over how many square miles, you realise that if you wanted to murder someone, you’d do it here. And partly, turns out, this is an example of how sometimes podcasters need to edit more. I gave up because the show seemed to lose sight of Kristal’s case and had decided instead to dump unedited and hard-to-hear phone calls with fuckups who keep repeating themselves endlessly, on a loop, like all stoners do.

The Black Tapes

I’ve previously written here that I don’t generally enjoy “comedy” podcasts, and it appears I have a similar issue with fiction in this format. I listened to Homecoming (now a TV series on Amazon), and thought it was all right (though I’m not rushing to renew the Amazon subscription). Similarly, I thought season 1 of The Black Tapes was all right. It’s a kind of radio version of those paranormal “found footage” movies, but it has a number of issues. The cast are unconvincing, often delivering lines woodenly. And the case itself ends up running around in circles, covering the same ground again and again. You end up thinking that there was a much better, and shorter, drama serial buried inside the three seasons of this. I gave up at the point in Season 3 when the presenter went to Istanbul, then took one phone call and went back home. It all starts to feel like padding, like content shat out in order to be a vehicle for ads. Honestly, I feel like a mug for continuing beyond season 1.