You Need To Listen To This American Life’s Incredible New Podcast, ‘Serial’

There are two months to go in 2014, but I’m calling it: new podcast Serial is the year’s best ‘thing’ — and in a year rife with great things, no less. The Grand Budapest Hotel; Drake’s airball; Alicia Florrick’s continued badassery on The Good Wife; this video of a dog fucking with a weatherman. Serial might have topped them all, and here’s the best part: It’s only just begun. Those of you eager to get in on the ground floor still can.

From the reliably enthralling storyweavers at This American Life comes this week-by-week exploration of a closed murder case with far too many lingering questions to let lie. Presenter Sarah Koenig leads us down the rabbit hole, slowly unveiling all that’s not quite right about the investigation into Adnan Syed for the strangling-death of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, back in 1999. New interviews with the major players – including Adnan, behind bars at a Maryland correctional facility – are interspersed with decades’ old audio from his trial, as well as police interrogations of other suspects with their own shady backstories.

There’ll be no spoilers here. Much of Serial’s brilliance is the way in which it skillfully drips information, like some kind of podcast cold brew. You don’t need some numbnuts writer like me blurting out the most shocking plot twists in the very article imploring you to listen to the damn thing.

As I write this, we’re just five episodes in, and though Koenig isn’t ready to break Syed out of jail herself, convinced of his innocence, she clearly sees something is rotten in the state of Baltimore. With her keen journalistic faculties and fine storytelling skills, Koenig makes clear before the end of even the first instalment that the truth is yet to be fully unearthed. The show’s pledge: to find something close to it by the final episode.

As if you needed them, here are five more reasons to start listening to Serial now.

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#1: The musical stylings of Nick Thorburn

Adding to the cinematic nature of this slowly unfurling murder-mystery is the soundtrack, provided by indie oddball Nick Thorburn, of The Unicorns and Islands fame, with an assist by Mark Henry Phillips.

Their twinkly piano theme ‘Bad Dream’ is a spooky overture that sets the stage for a nightmare; a nightmare for Hae Min that will end in her unexpected death, and, for Adnan, one that will perhaps never end at all. The three-song suite ‘No One Dies’ evokes Julee Cruise’s hypnotic Twin Peaks anthem, ‘Falling’, while their ‘Murderland’ marries the slow-burn synths of John Carpenter’s Halloween score with the industrial aesthetic of Trent Reznor’s work for David Fincher.

The whole collection is available on Bandcamp, by the way, so feel free to let Serial’s haunting soundscape permeate all facets of your life.

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#2: It’s Pretty Funny

The gravity of the situation and the undeniably disturbing details of Hae Min’s death are never given short shrift. However, Koenig’s disarming sense of humour and her casual, piercing, often funny interviews with the actual human beings affected makes Serial a supremely entertaining and very empathetic investigation — not at all the detached, clinical exploration of some distanced cold case it could have been.

For instance, here’s how Koenig describes a major oversight by Adnan’s attorney back in 1999: “That is not a strategy. That is a fuck-up.” That is also my new catchphrase.

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#3: It’s the perfect companion piece to Gone Girl, Twin Peaks, True Detective and Broadchurch 

As Koenig reads from Hae Min’s diary — specifically when she describes her relationship with Adnan, soundtracked by K-Ci and JoJo’s ‘All My Life’ — thoughts of Amy Dunne’s adoring journal entries on her husband Nick from Gone Girl will no doubt spring to mind. And maybe it’s because news of Twin Peaks’ imminent resurrection is so fresh, the circumstances of Hae Min’s grotesque discovery seemed to echo that of Laura Palmer’s. (It also mirrored the crime in True Detective, though unlike in that show, Hae Min is no abstract totem.)

The ethos of another televisual whodunit, Broadchurch, acts as a fitting tagline for Serial: “People are unknowable”. As family, friends, one-time acquaintances and unlucky strangers find themselves drawn into this sticky web, they are asked to pass judgment on one another and ponder aloud who could truly be capable of such an unspeakable crime. A common refrain emerges: “Everyone else, besides me.”

Oh, and fans of Aussie horror flick Lake Mungo, in which a family’s inquiry into their daughter’s death continues to reveal increasingly horrific truths — not to mention the enthralling ‘did he do it?’ documentary The Staircase — will certainly find something compelling in Serial too.

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#4: Prepare to feel it.

Don’t let all those aforementioned cinematic comparisons lessen the impact of Serial; this real murder case has not simply been channeled into disposable entertainment. All of the above – be they fiction or documentary – speak to our human nature, dark impulses and the terrifying underbelly of humanity. Serial similarly asks big questions, and explores frightening ideas.

From the very first episode, in which Adnan insists on how his seemingly innocent actions from that fateful day in 1999 were twisted into evidence of criminality, we wonder how we would fare under such scrutiny. Could we easily recall, under interrogation, what we did on a precise day several weeks earlier? What if something we said in jest suspiciously came true? Will the fact that I consecutively read My Friend Dahmer, Manson and The Most Dangerous Animal Of All come back to bite me on the ass in the near future?

And then there’s the persistent throb of this case’s most chilling question: at what point did Hae Min know she was going to die? There was apparently just 21 minutes between the last time she was seen alive and when experts believe she expired. 21 minutes. Our mortality is the great unspoken spoiler. But are our lives really so fragile we could always be 21 minutes from death? And at the hands of someone we trust?

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#5: It could be the first ever “masterpiece” podcast 

Sounding somewhat like an old-school radio play (minus the silly sound effects and casual racism), Serial is both an engrossing throwback to radio when it was still relevant, and an exciting glimpse ahead at what the podcast medium can achieve.

Of course, we need to reserve “masterpiece” judgement until the first season comes to an end with whatever conclusion Koenig and her producers arrive at. Will Adnan be freed? Will another of the potential suspects finally come clean? Will Adnan’s guilt be confirmed? Or will Hae Min’s death forever be a mystery? Answers, like tomorrows, are promised to no one. So far though, the profound, enthralling Serial has more than proven its worth.

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Binge through the first five episodes of Serial below, head to their website, or subscribe to the podcast.

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Simon Miraudo is an AFCA award-winning writer and film critic. He is also co-host of The Podcasting Couch and tweets at @simonmiraudo.

Feature image — a cell tower map of Baltimore — provided by Serial.