Have Narrative Podcasts Gone Mainstream? Bodkin Examined

The Netflix television series riffs on podcast tropes to create a dramatic series...PLUS a great LONG WEEKEND listening queue for some stuck-in-traffic drives

When I started Bingeworthy, one of my explicit goals was to do my part to make sure that narrative podcasts become “a thing,” indeed a vague reference. Chat casts, celebrity interviews, news, white label content and inside-baseball-niche-topic-talk podcasts can all be great, but I exclude them from “narrative.” I’m looking at audio that tells an enduring story, over time.

It’s not that narrative podcasts aren’t real already (and have been for a long time). And yes, they are taken seriously. What I’m referring to here is the wide cultural acknowledgment of narrative podcasts as both a storytelling technique and an art form in its own right. 

Mostly, I wanted to be able to write the foregoing description so that it’s much shorter and needs way fewer disclaimers, for when a random person asks me, 'So what is a podcast?'(which happens more than you might think), they understand what I mean when I quickly explain the difference between a narrative series, and an interview/chat series.

Pickleball made this leap. Once a newbie racquet sport that few people had heard of, fast forward a few years, and now tennis courts across North America are getting converted into pickleball courts, Lululemon launched a pickleball apparel line, and Drake bought a pickleball team. It’s a thing. You don’t show up to a pickleball game with a tennis racquet.

That’s basically what I want to do for podcasts. Also, a bespoke line of clothing from Lululemon with a hood that would keep my AirPods from taking in the sound of wind while I’m jogging-listening would be great too.

Short of that, the test as to whether podcasts have merged into the mainstream zeitgeist will include one or more of the following: 

• Multiple comedy routines about the topic

• Inside jokes that become “tropes”

• A “podcaster” archetype 

• A blockbuster hit

Last week when I discovered the Netflix true-crime dark comedy Bodkin, I wondered, maybe we have arrived. 

The series has largely received meh reviews; others blame it for its base portrayal of small town Ireland. But for me, all these details are beside the point.

Why do I find this series notable? Here’s a mainstream dramatic series, more specifically a dark comedy, that’s fashioned around a whole host of podcast production tropes.

Bodkin follows a one-hit-wonder American podcaster named Gilbert, played by SNL alum Will Forte, who along with his over-eager but quitely-capable assistant Emmy, and the hard-nosed investigative print journalist Dove who needs to lie low after one of her stories provokes a police investigation, the three of them end up in a small town in West Cork, Ireland.

Yes, they drink Guinness at the pub. Yes, they sing folk tales. Yes, they all get variously smashed at some point drinking whisky. Yes, there’s a rich dude who owns a server farm…yes there’s a character named Seamus with red hair who wears an Aran knit sweater. They covered off all the tropes of Ireland.

In this dark comedy they meet the Irish tropes and match them with podcast tropes:

• The tension between trad print journalists and podcast journalists

• Recording every thought as you go on portable Tascam

• The over-eager intern

• Dove to Gilbert: “You’re not a journalist, you’re a pornographer”

• Gilbert on when he found the story: “I’ll be able to sell the TV rights before the show even airs”

• Emmy to Dove: “You’re not some noble high-minded investigative journalist…you just do whatever you feel like to get what you want” 

• Main antagonist Seamus: “You blew up my life,” to which Gilbert replies “I just wanted to tell a story.”

It’s a dark comedy, which requires all of the characters to be deeply flawed; none of them are particularly likable, and the facts of how to act properly as a journalist have been given a television glaze—the one that allows anything to happen for the sake of the script. But here’s where I spot the win: television has come to audio to tell them how to frame a story. And this time, the framing concept is that of a podcast production.

The lead character Gilbert doesn’t seem to be born for audio; it’s made clear that he got famous when his first podcast blew up, which started as one thing, but ended up publishing the story of his wife getting diagnosed with cancer. So, pedalling personal stories for professional gain. Does that sound vaguely familiar? That’s trope number one.

That success netted Gilbert a seat as a beloved host; but his sophomore work has not measured up. His wife flies to Ireland, which he interprets as a visit, but it turns out to be something else entirely. The inside joke of podcast edits comes alive in the moment when his wife hands him divorce papers to sign on the spot, with a grim reminder: “You can’t fix this in the edit.” And once again, we are appeased by an inside joke repurposed for public laughs, trope number two.

The central tension that this series is built on the debate between the two styles of journalism: print or podcast

Which will prevail? This ensures a cat and mouse escapade that follows the entire series. Will it be the soft-talking-agreeable approach of the podcaster Gilbert, who at times falls short on morals (and accepts a bribe from someone not to be featured in his show); or the hard-to-the-core print journalist Dove who isn’t afraid to side step the law (break and enter, stealing evidence from a crime scene) to get the story that she needs?

Enter the third character: the doe-eyed intern Emmy (trope number three), who falls exactly in between both of their methods. And as the character Mrs O’Shea rightly points out “Emmy seems to be the only capable one here,” she conveniently resolves the tension between the two extremes. It doesn’t totally spoil the ending if I tell you that she is the victorious, sane and grounded one who redeems the plot—Intern for the win.

But even here we are reminded of another journalist reality to consider. After she admits to sleeping with one of the locals, Dove takes a strip off her: “This is a small town and people talk. You realize as a woman you’re only ever taken half as seriously in this profession, so we need to work twice as hard.”

The series ends in a satisfying, if not award-winning way, where the true crime is solved, and the crime wasn’t what they thought it was.

First, Gilbert concludes the story by admitting that he came to tell a new story, which he found, but that along the way, he learned more about himself as a consequence. Including, he said, “Our stories are who we are. And I need a better one.” He records this into his Tascam, and then hurls it into the river below.

And as that scene dissolves, Dove appears. “You probably think this is the end of the story…but it’s not…” And then she goes on to explain her conclusion, the actual ending, and last word. Welcome to the final podcast trope: the false ending.

Here’s what’s in my listening queue:

The Pretendians

I remember when I learned that Grey Owl was the original Pretendian, rather than the noble Indigenous voice of conservation for the Canadian wilderness. Archie Belaney, his birth name, was actually in Britain in 1888, and as a young adult moved to Canada. Bored by Toronto, he found a way to Northern Ontario, whereupon he adopted a “half-Indian” status, claiming his mother was Apache. This sort of fraudster might have been quaint and cute back then, but with no real way to check these origin stories, they just rolled. But we live in a different age now, and for many reasons, the Pretendians live among us. In a new series from Canadaland, co-hosts Robert Jago (Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe) and Angel Ellis (Muscogee (Creek) Nation) dig into egregious identity theft, and why it’s so very compl

Cover Up: The Conspiracy Tapes

There’s a sub-genre of podcasts that I like to follow which I call Cult-or-Not? For some reason, this sort of investigation lends itself well to the podcast format. Is it because we have a runway of many hours to work with? Or the fact that people listen so intimately it means that their critical faculties are all fired up? Or is it that if they are done well, they just make for a great story. What I do know is that

Eric Nuzum

spent 6 years researching the life of John Todd, the most anyone-name, and it kinda blew his mind.

Expanse: Spies in the Outback

I’m intrigued by these podcast series that I call Franchise Podcasts; they are shows that maintain a “root word title,” (like Cover Up, above), and then each season is deligneated with a colon and a unique name. So here we have Expanse: Spies In The Outback, which is out of Australia from ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Australia used to feel so far away from the rest of the world that the idea was that you could hide things away in the desert and the rest of the world not notice. I’m curious to see how this went for this spy who found himself near Alice Springs. Also curious to see if I can be won over by another franchise….tbd.

The Butterfly King

A Royal family in decline…that’s not from Britain? This series wants to find out the truth of why, and how, King Borris III of Bulgaria, aka The Butterfly King, was killed during WWII (perhaps a good time to stage a murder with so much going on). It’s an odd coincidence is the fact that the recent portrait of King Charles that was just unveiled has a monarch butterfly on his left shoulder. Likely completely unrelated, but still, wow! Hosted and reported by award-winning British journalist Becky Milligan, this series promises a whole bunch of twists and turns, lies and deceit, and maybe even an uncovering of an old truth.

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Briefly Mentioned:

Canadaland Competition: Local Correspondent: deadline May 31, 2024.

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RIP Alice Munro - Canadian icon of the short story.

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