Picks of the week
Pseudocide
Spotify’s new podcast about people who faked their own deaths is a hub of tangled twists and turns. Alice Fiennes and Poppy Damon host the show, but in the first episode they let key players tell the story of the “Belrose Bomb”. Brett Boyd was left with life-changing injuries after a parcel bomb exploded at his home, but the circumstances around the attack were already a mystery when suspect Roberto de Heredia disappeared. Future episodes include a blogger who staged a hoax, a 14th-century nun who vanished to escape her life, and MP John Stonehouse, who pretended to have drowned.
Hannah Verdier
At Your Peril
Spooky podcasts are having a moment, from audio dramas The Battersea Poltergeist and Sour Hall (from the BBC and Audible respectively), to comedy-horror show Seancecast. At Your Peril is more of a ‘Goosebumps for grownups’ sort of affair, an anthology of deliciously devilish tales about beleaguered psychics, shady chefs, and artists whose deaths appear to be Bansky-style works of art (see: Man In Limbo, with Richard Gadd). Macabre fun for fans of Inside No 9 – and sleeping with the lights on. Hannah J Davies
Producer pick: West Cork
Chosen by Danielle Stephens
I’m not normally a fan of true crime podcasts, but the Audible series West Cork – now also available on Apple Podcasts – is different. Many Irish people, myself included, know the story of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. The French television producer was found murdered in a small town in Ireland in 1996, a place still reeling from her death 25 years later.
The problem is that when I say that “people know the story”, we still don’t know exactly what happened. Which is where Jennifer Forde and Sam Bungey come in. You might have an opinion on who murdered Sophie before you start listening, but over the course of this 13-part series (stick with it) you’re introduced to information that the papers and radio stations didn’t have the capacity to fit in at the time.
This series is important because of the way it handles the tragedy. Characters are brought in to tell us who Sophie wasbesides simply being an infamous victim. With a deep exploration into local and national policing, and an empathic look into how a small town in Ireland ticks, it has everything you need for a top notch investigative series.
Talking points
Apple TV+ have made a foray in to narrative audio with their new series The Line, hosted by Dan Taberski (Missing Richard Simmons, Surviving Y2K). It sees the podcaster delve in to the case of US Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of murder in Iraq. A TV documentary will follow later in the year.
Why not try: Dark Air | Brydon & | The Comedy Arcade
