Apocalypse thrillers and Afrofuturistic epics: 2019's best dramatic podcasts

Non-fiction is still king in the rapidly expanding podcast universe: the bulk of on-demand audio remains dedicated to interviews, debates about sport or pop culture, and the genre that pushed podcasting into the mainstream, true crime. But some of those formats have gone stale: if we have maybe had enough of 12-part documentaries about a multiple child murder in Delaware in 1995, we can certainly do without any more two-hour chinwags where famous-ish people chat to their friends. Be thankful, then, that podcasting has a new big thing: dramatic fiction. Serialised audio drama is emerging as a defined genre, nourished by a symbiotic relationship with the golden age of TV. It’s still early, but the possibilities look infinite.

This month saw Facebook Watch debut a TV thriller called Limetown, starring Jessica Biel and Stanley Tucci, about a public-radio reporter looking into the disappearance of 326 people at a Tennessee research facility. It is a remake of a 2015 podcast that started the audio drama surge by capitalising on the success of true-crime megahit Serial. Limetown used the same storytelling techniques to map out a work of fiction.

Last year, Amazon Prime Video distributed Homecoming, a tantalising double-timeline conspiracy drama starring Julia Roberts, no less, alongside Bobby Cannavale. It too was a TV retread of a hit podcast that had made waves two years earlier. Both Homecoming and Limetown fed the ravenous monster that is multi-platform peak TV with fresh ideas, shot through with a jittery nerdiness. Designed for lone listeners with headphones on, they translate well to the modern small-screen box set, a medium willing to take stylistic risks. Next to move to telly is The Horror of Dolores Roach, a Sweeney Todd-esque parable about a released convict who responds murderously to the gentrification of her old NYC neighbourhood, featuring – in the audio original, which returns for season two this month – Daphne Rubin-Vega and Cannavale (again).

Podcast dramas do not, however, require television’s blessing to snag A-listers. The original Homecoming, for instance, was scarcely less starry than the Amazon version: David Schwimmer, Catherine Keener and Oscar Isaac were in it. Sandra, a kooky drama about a woman who goes to work for a company making an Alexa-like virtual assistant – the twist being that the device’s responses are improvised by a vast team of human operators – managed to hire Alia Shawkat to play the new employee and Kristen Wiig as the digital voice of Sandra, with Christopher Abbott and Ethan Hawke in supporting roles. It has got major performers in it already and is a thoughtful, spiky thing with its own singular style, ideally suited to smartphone consumption; even audiobooks, booming as they are, can’t compete with the bitesized episodes of a good drama when it comes to offering a hit of story that fits within a single commute.

Podcasts also regularly now give established actors the chance to try stuff out: take 36 Questions, for instance, a musical led by Tony nominee and Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff that takes advantage of the intimacy of the medium; or Blackout, an apocalyptic thriller centring on a small-town DJ played by Rami Malek. The likes of Groff and Malek are utilising a facility that’s always been open to British actors, thanks to BBC Radio 3 and 4 maintaining the radio drama tradition that the US lost in the 1950s. Audio projects tend to be challenging and creatively nourishing but require a fraction of the time commitment demanded by TV or film.

Other big US podcasts are acutely aware that they’re reviving a genre that, in the US, was considered long dead. Welcome to Night Vale, a series of local radio broadcasts addressing the residents of a town riven by bizarre phenomena, has the retro shimmer of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds. Its success fuelled the creation of production house Night Vale Presents, which has since released monologue-based mystery drama Alice Isn’t Dead, spooky found-audio saga Within the Wires and “Afrofuturistic buddy comedy” Adventures in New America, among others.

One indication that drama podcasting is still nascent is that the big shows are the work of a handful of producers. Paranormal pseudo-docs The Black Tapes, Tanis and Rabbits are all by writer-producer Terry Miles, while Limetown and 36 Questions are both from the same company, Two-Up. Sandra, The Horror of Dolores Roach and Homecoming, meanwhile, are on the roster of Gimlet Media, perhaps podcasting’s strongest player. Its upcoming releases include a second season of fantasy saga The Two Princes, and new cyber-revenge conspiracy/romance drama Motherhacker, starring Carrie Coon and Alan Cumming.

Gimlet gained new clout when it was acquired in February by Spotify for $230m – so we can hope for a lot more imaginative fiction, and a little less of George Ezra interviewing Ed Sheeran. Podcast dramas have arrived, and they’re only in their first act.

Six of the best serialised podcasts

The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air)
Instantly recognisable as a product of the Night Vale Presents stable, this cavalcade of faux-analogue weirdness is set inside the Eiffel Tower, where a janitor who has always dreamed of radio stardom constantly tries and fails to become involved in the razzle-dazzle production that’s beamed live from the tower’s ballroom. Wry and dry but sprinkled with glittery wonder, it co-stars John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) alongside its creator, and Neutral Milk Hotel member, Julian Koster.

Passenger List
A conspiracy thriller that starts with a Bulgarian boy left behind by his mother at Heathrow: the plane she boards then vanishes over the Atlantic. The child is the first clue for Kaitlin Le (Kelly Marie Tran of Star Wars: The Last Jedi fame), who doesn’t believe the tragedy was really caused by a bird-related accident. Soon she is deep in a morass of computer hackers and human traffickers. The odd stilted performance doesn’t derail an addictively plotty drama.

Blackout
A societal-breakdown drama that makes good use of the confined spaces for which podcast drama is perfect. Rami Malek channels his Mr Robot dynamic – ie responding with a sort of tremulous emo-irritation to the onset of Armageddon – as a resident of a small town cut off when the power goes down and stays down. His radio show makes him the focal point of a microcosmic story about fragile community bonds.

The Two Princes
Inhabiting the same ballpark as The Princess Bride or Disenchantment – cutely, the promotional imagery suggests you picture animation rather than live actors – this comedy adventure stars Booksmart’s Noah Galvin as a prince on a quest to save his kingdom from a curse. He then meets, and falls for, another prince (Ari’el Stachel) on a rival quest. Christine Baranski and Matthew Rhys have enormous fun over-enunciating their supporting roles.

36 Questions
Jonathan Groff and Jessie Shelton are a near-divorcing couple resorting to a questionnaire designed to foster intimacy, in a series that is ideal for listening to on the device you used to use for MP3s: it’s a musical. Deft and bittersweet, 36 Questions takes advantage of podcasts’ ability to be intimate and intricate, coming over like a stage production in a tiny theatre.

Alice Isn’t Dead
Jasika Nicole does fine work as the lone protagonist – at least, until the magnificently offhand reveal that concludes season one – of a mystery drama about a trucker searching for her missing wife. Suffused with the ennui and suggested menace of rural America’s small towns, it gradually delves into murky conspiracy drama but is stronger when it’s simply a ruminative monologue delivered by a woman picking over the old bones of a lost love.