At the London Podcast Festival, the cast of Drunk Women Solving Crime (Hannah George, Catie Wilkins and Taylor Glenn) and RedHanded (Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala) head to the stage with bottles of Waitrose-branded Cava. This is the second time the shows have collaborated so there is already a deep familiarity with each other and their sense of humour. The ladies pour Cava into their glasses, ready to tackle some mysteries.

Since 2018, the three hosts of Drunk Women Solving Crime have gathered to solve true crimes that are a bit more lighthearted than the usual calibre of misdemeanours. Plus, every guest must present a personal crime that the team must solve together.

Tonight, they begin by inviting Suruthi Bala to share a story from her university days: the strange disappearance of her notebook with crucial notes from lectures, as well as a distinct pair of shoes she found at a stranger’s house… Suruthi’s story goes on for some time, with each extra detail making the case more intriguing. In the end, the team reckon it was the rival flat of girls below Suruthi as revenge for her disrupting their partying activities. It’s good fun and gets the audience warmed up to the true crime we are about to dissect.

The case is that of Helen Hullick, who was arrested for repeatedly wearing trousers when testifying in court. Host Taylor Glenn is fairly arbitrary in the rules of the game. She begins a sentence about the story but then leaves a pause for Team Drunk Women or Team Redhanded to guess what happened next. Most of the scores are dished out for who made the funniest quips rather than legitimate guessing (though the two sometimes came hand-in-hand).

This section of the show has a good balance of an intriguing story, whilst also having the air of a bunch of friends having fun and making each other laugh, which is infectious. The audience feel welcome to contribute their guesses, which is welcomed by the teams on stage, and we are even granted a point! When it comes to wrapping up this segment, Team Drunk Women and Team Redhanded call it a draw, because it doesn’t really matter who won, but instead it was about sharing this fascinating story.

Now it’s time for an audience member to share a story. The chosen storyteller is the sister of someone who previously submitted a ‘true crime’ for the team to solve (which if you hadn’t listened to the show you might not understand). This segment ends rather succinctly, as Taylor’s now keen to keep to time, but it leaves room for some extra jokes and funny misunderstandings.

The audience members who were familiar with the shows had had the Drunk Women/Redhanded fix they wanted, and laughed alongside the cast. There were a number of people who had not listened to either podcast featured, but this felt like a show where it was not necessary to have done the research. The structure was clear, the story of Helen Hullick was engaging, and the comedy left the audience feeling satisfied, with their spirits lifted.

Before we leave, Taylor shares all the achievements Helen Hullick went on to do as a way to celebrate a fantastic woman who always advocated for fairness and equality. I think about how the show was a fun way to dissect the way the patriarchy can be needlessly inconvenient, and the fantastic ways women hit back with their stubbornness.

Listen to Drunk Women Solve Crime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps.

Listen to RedHanded on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps.

The post REVIEW // A night with Drunk Women Caught RedHanded appeared first on POD BIBLE.

The alternative name for their show – Wittertainment – has yet to trouble the OED. But the duo have been part of the podcasting furniture for so long it’s easy to forget exactly how important they’ve been to making podcasts feel like something important and useful.

That first episode was downloaded 42 times. Since then, the duo have been reliably among the most-downloaded podcast hosts of them all in the UK, and returned to the top of the podcasting charts with their shiny new Sony show Kermode and Mayo’s Take. With plush new digs, a big neon sign and crisp HD clips ready for YouTube, it feels like right at home in the podcast landscape in 2022.

But so much remains the same from the BBC days: running jokes which nobody can quite remember the origins of, rants against unworthy films from Kermode, perceptive interviewing and occasional sly digs from Mayo, and a bulging mailbag of thoughtful, enlightened views about films old and new from the listeners.

Here’s a primer to get you going.

Kermode and Mayo’s Take: Tom Hiddleston

The first edition of the new show began just as their first show on 5 Live did in 2001 following their first shows together on Radio 1: with Kermode jabbing a finger and picking up as if nothing had happened with, “And another thing…” New features abound, but the good natured bickering and the revelatory correspondence abides. First guest Tom Hiddleston, on to chat about The Essex Serpent, began with a gushing tribute to the show and its hosts. The old smoothie. Listen now on Apple Podcasts >>

Kermode and Mayo’s Take: Tom Hanks

For some years now, the Wittertainment lodestar has been Tom Hanks, America’s dad and all-round voice of sanity and goodness. His most recent chat with with Mayo saw him on typically ebullient form, talking up the tacky appeal of his Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic and reassuring us – in acknowledgement of one of many longstanding Wittertainment catchphrases – that everything will, in fact, be alright in the end. Listen now on Apple Podcasts >>

Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review: Chadwick Boseman

Given how simple he makes it sound, it’s easy to forget quite how adept an interviewer Mayo is, and how adroitly he can draw stories and opinions out of pretty much any guest. (A truculent Charlie Kaufman was a notable exception.) Best of all was an extraordinarily thoughtful response from Chadwick Boseman to Martin Scorsese’s dismissal of Marvel’s cinematic credentials. Far from being lightweight, Boseman said, Black Panther tapped into anxieties among black Americans. “We felt that angst, we felt that danger from cinema when we watched it,” he said. “And maybe Scorsese didn’t get that when he watched it. That’s generational. That’s cultural. I’m secure in what we did.” Listen now on Apple Podcasts >>

Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review: Sex and the City 2

A Kermodian rant against a film which has failed dismally is one of nature’s great events, and catching one live on the BBC show felt like seeing the Northern Lights or watching a blue whale breach from the sea in front of a perfect sunset. Kermode’s 2010 review of the SATC sequel is perhaps the definitive, Platonic form. “You’re not gonna get a rant about this,” Kermode says at the outset. Seven minutes later, he’s singing The Internationale and has declared its central characters “imperialist American pig-dogs of the highest order”. Beautiful stuff. Listen now on Apple Podcasts >>

To learn more about Mayo and Kermode, their love of podcasts, and their new show, read our interview in Issue 22 of the Pod Bible Magazine now!

The post Where to start with… Kermode & Mayo appeared first on POD BIBLE.

To celebrate the launch of Issue #015 of Pod Bible magazine, Scroobius Pip and Stu Whiffen had a nice old chinwag with the hosts of Off Menu – Ed Gamble & James Acaster. The guys discuss the show’s success, podcasting during the pandemic and their personal recommendations before opening some very special gifts to commemorate their appearance as cover stars!

– Listen to Off Menu here!

– Read issue #015 of Pod Bible here!

– Listen to Ed & James on the Pod Bible Podcast here!

– Discover the best Off Menu episodes for a new listener to check out here!

Cover illustration by Dan Evans – idrawforfood.co.uk

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