"Serial" Spin-off "S-Town" Ready to be Binged

The Poker Central Podcast and Heads Up with Remko are my favorite recurring podcasts, I’m contractually obligated to say that, but my all-time favorite is This American Life spin-off Serial. Through two seasons, host Sarah Koenig used investigative journalism to narrate two stories through multiple episodes, each more mind-blowing than the next.

Season 1, which was released in late 2014, investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a high school student in Maryland. Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and the series worked through his initial mistrial, his conviction and his eventual life sentencing.

Season 2, which was released in late 2015, focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban and then charged with desertion. Koenig teamed up with Academy Award winning screenwriter Mark Boal for this series, which worked through Bergdahl’s timeline and reason for desertion, all the way to his court-martial order, where the Army will eventually decide his fate.

There isn’t a Season 3 of Serial just yet but if Serial was a This American Life spin-off, then S-Town is a Serial spin-off. S-Town, is the seven-chapter series about an investigation into a “shit town” in Alabama, an alleged murder, another murder, the search for the truth, a hunt for hidden treasure and host Brian Reed doing just what John McLemore, who lives in that “shit town”, asked of him when he first reached out to This American Life and said, “Come down to this pathetic little Baptist shit town and blow it off the map.”

Through the first chapter of S-Town, Reed doesn’t blow the lid off anything but he does start to lay the foundation of what could be an awesome mini-series following the Serial format. From the metaphorical reference to clock repair that opened the series, to McLemore’s backyard maze and the jump into an actual investigation by the end of the first hour, I’ll definitely binge listen to the rest of S-Town.

That is possible this time around, as unlike the past two seasons of Serial, where episodes have been released weekly, all seven S-Town episodes were released in full yesterday. I’ll get to them after, of course, I catch up on the Poker Central Podcast.