Serial
I guess the only thing I could ask you to do is if none of this makes any sense to you... Just read it again. Except this time please imagine that I really am innocent. And then maybe it'll make sense to you.
Considering the avalanche of True Crime podcasts that came after it, Serial stands tall as one of, if not the, most influential podcasts of all time. Personally, I had always been a big podcast listener over the years with a heavy focus on gaming podcasts. I loved Podcast Beyond, Game Scoop and the Rooster Teeth podcast. I had enjoyed some This American Life, but I wouldn't have been a weekly listener. The episode that brought me in was 129 cars, about a car dealership trying to hit their quotas which I thought was such a compelling story. That episode really kickstarted my interest in long form storytelling which led me to Michael Moore, multiple youtubers and, of course, Serial.
The podcast itself was such a compelling story. What happened to Hae Min Lee is horrific and ultimately you hope that law enforcement would investigate it with a level of thoroughness and professionalism that ensures that justice is served. Whether Adnan was involved will likely always be unclear at this stage. However, as Sarah peels back the layers of the case it is very clear that the evidence against Adnan was not incredible.
It truly is a stellar example of weekly storytelling. So often these days Netflix will drop an entire series all at once and encourage binge-watching, but Serial benefitted so much from having an evolving narrative week to week. Additionally, as the show entered the cultural zeitgeist, it started to seem like the show itself was having an impact on the outcome of the case. It felt like such unique moment in time, and I was always desperate for the next episode. People were poring over maps, estimating driving times, testing phone towers and posting full conspiracy theories online.
At the end of the day, this story is about real people so it's selfish of us as an audience to demand more from the show. The segment in which Sarah speaks to teenagers about what they did last week has always stuck with me as it shows how difficult it is to retrace your steps when we are going through our normal daily motions. It's so difficult for Sarah to get detailed answers about what the various people who knew Hae Min Lee did that day 14 years ago.
That being said, I have always felt that the show ends on a bit of a weak note. It took 8 more years for Adnan to have his conviction vacated and this process continued to be complicated with continued appeals and changes. It's reality, not fiction so timelines are more genuine and don't serve the narrative.
Thankfully, in later years, the influence of Serial has led to a surge of similar stories such as A Good Girl's Guide to Murder which I have discussed before. Holly Jackson has mentioned Serial as being a huge influence and this is very clear when reading. It's a great series and it invoked a certain nostalgia for those early days listening to Serial.
Serial seemed to have a similar impact on podcasting that the pandemic did on tech. There was a huge boom and companies were expanding their podcasting networks everywhere. Gimlet was founded and had fantastic, long-form shows such as Start Up and Mystery Show which had a similar style to Serial. I imagine the popularity of Serial played a huge role in their ability to gain funding early on. Gimlet were bought by Spotify and all of the big tech companies started pushing their music platforms to also host podcasts. This, like the pandemic, led to a bit of a shift back to reality after a couple of years with the acceptance that the reach that Serial had was an outlier.
Ultimately Serial remains a podcast that I return to from time to time. It became the fastest ever podcast on Apple Podcasts to hit 5 million downloads. It had a lasting legacy and set the bar for True Crime for years to come.
