When Carrie Bradshaw was hauled back onscreen 17 years after the final Sex and the City episode aired for new spin-off And Just Like That, fans knew updates and changes were inevitable. But few saw the Vogue dating columnist swapping out her iconic feathered peacock headpiece for gigantic headphones and a Zoom audio. Bradshaw, to the surprise of many, had become a podcaster.
The elegant Bradshaw perched in a recording studio with a WeWork aesthetic is already an absurd situation. But the show she co-presents on the programme takes this a step further by wringing comedy out of the whole concept of the podcast. X, Y and Me is introduced to viewers as “the podcast that talks about gender roles, sexual roles and Cinnamon rolls – all the roles I care passionately about”. There’s also a co-host to “represent cis het men”, while sound effects featuring words like “woke moment” boom out across the show in a wrestling commentator-style voice.
Whether it’s Bradshaw in And Just Like That, or the deliberately hammy audio hosts in Only Murders in the Building and ITV crime drama Karen Pirie, podcasters are television’s latest punchline. From unhinged true crime fanatics turned citizen journalists to narcissistic men with microphones and brash opinions, these hungry new media types are ravaging television. But what makes the industry and the subsequent new stereotypes so ripe for satire?
When it comes to And Just Like That, podcasting’s popularity in recent years made it a neat device for portraying Bradshaw as a fish out of water. “[It was] one more way of signalling Carrie’s alienation due to her age,” says Juno Dawson, author and co-host of the Sex and the City podcast So I Got to Thinking. “I think the remit of the reboot was to explore how culture has moved on, leaving some women – who were previously at the cutting edge – behind somewhat.”
The show might not exactly have triumphed in this attempt, sadly – at least when it comes to podcasts. “It was like a bad drive-time radio show,” says Caroline O’Donoghue, author and co-host of Sentimental in the City, a Sex and the City podcast. The deep misunderstanding it exposed around podcasts and what they actually were was “especially embarrassing” for a show that is often razor-sharp on the inner workings of industries like publishing and magazine media.
Fortunately, there’s certainly something timely about And Just Like That’s use of Jackie Nee, i.e. the cis het male perspective in Bradshaw’s And Just Like That podcast. He kicks off X, Y and Me with a question likely borrowed from a frat afterparty: “Why don’t you see women jerking off on the subway?” On TikTok, the hashtag #menwithpodcasts has 18.4 million podcasts and videos often show women utilising the beard filter and parodying Joe Rogan-like figures. Their videos spoof male takes on issues like why women “suddenly don’t like being stared at”, “the problem with women who read” or those who wear makeup. These sexist caricatures come from a very real genre of male podcasting, where men boast about living an “alpha male” lifestyle, and while Nee is a lighthearted poke at the scene, many actual podcast bros are deeply sexist, regressive and offensive. Last year, the male hosts of the NoFilterPod received backlash for claiming they would end a relationship if a partner “let themselves go” after giving birth, while Jack Denmo, host of Good Bro Bad Bro, went viral for claiming he’d never met a woman with hobbies. Nee’s bro-y humour is an open invitation to cringe and eye-roll.
Other than And Just Like That, several shows are taking aim at true crime podcasters. The genre, which exploded after the success of Serial nine years ago, has galvanised everyday people to involve themselves with murder cases but also treat real tragedies as social media whodunits. Naturally, this aspect of culture has opened the door to satire and sarcasm on TV recently.
ITV’s crime drama Karen Pirie, an adaptation of one of crime writer Val McDermid’s bestsellers, The Distant Echo, follows the murder of barmaid Rosie Duff. Despite a lack of new evidence, the case is brought up again 25 years later because “some woke millennial’s found a microphone”– i.e. a true crime podcaster jumped on the case. “This? This is what passes for journalism now, is it? A sultry voice and a bit of a jingle?” a disgruntled superintendent says.
The podcaster in question, Bel Richmond, played by Rakhee Thakrar, perfectly encapsulates the underlying arrogance at the heart of many everyday true crime podcasters or armchair detectives who assume they’re a force for good.
Podcasting has become “sort of a shorthand for a punchline for a certain kind of millennial-ness”, says O’Donoghue. For “Gen Xers, it’s being sort of cynical yet absurdly wealthy; boomers being incredibly egotistical. And for millennials, I think the punchline is that they’re sort of hand-wringing, overly concerned about things and pay a lot of lip service to ideologies that they don’t necessarily follow.” She uses the example of recycling, and how many will talk about the issue without actually recycling. “I think podcasting surmises that attitude in a very visible way and it’s the art form that most reflects us as a generation.” Richmond cares about justice, she says, but is happy to suggest that one or three of the young students who found the body are guilty without any evidence.
While undeniably irritating, Richmond barely reaches the Cruella De Vil level of malevolence of Cinda Canning, played by Tina Fey, in Only Murders in the Building. Canning, also the host of a hugely successful true crime show called All Is Not OK in Oklahoma, is a new interpretation of the amoral, ruthless reporter. Not only is she awful to work with (she steals her assistant’s name for a new true crime podcast and threatens her “stocking the NPR fridge with LaCroix until [she’s] 50” if she tells anyone) but she’s later found to have fudged the reporting for it.
Her approach to the tragic subject matter, a missing girl, is also cartoonishly evil too. Upon hearing about the case from her assistant, she says: “Well, let’s hope she’s dead. Ideally, murdered – ooh, and by that mayor would be amazing.”
Caning’s flippant approach to murders and crime is the basis for Peacock’s series Based on a True Story, starring Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina, as a husband and a true-crime podcaster who discover their extremely attractive and charming plumber is a serial killer. Rather than turn him in, the pair blackmail him into joining them on a podcast about his murders in the hopes the project will be a gigantic financial and cultural success. The series, like Only Murders in the Building, draws on the stereotype of rabid true crime fans, the widespread hunger for violent content, and criticism that many podcasters capitalise on gruesome acts and individuals to further their own careers and finances.
In many ways, podcasts have opened up a new portal in TV. Millennials have also grown up in fractured employment, and the life Bradshaw once led as just a freelance columnist isn’t possible for most younger people; we’re a generation of side-hustlers. This allows characters to traverse more boundaries. Previously, scandi-noirs and whodunits were limited to detective or police main characters, but thanks to true crime podcasting, that limitation is no longer the case. “Any sort of millennial with a day job,” says O’Donoghue, “give them a podcast and it gives them a reason to investigate into worlds they wouldn’t normally be in.” This plot point allows the unexpected, kooky characters in Based on a True Story and Only Murders in the Building to become the leading detectives.
But comedy also works to raise some very real anxieties around podcasting, says Bethany Klein a , professor of media and communications at University of Leeds. Narratives of the morally dubious true crime podcaster or everyday person wading into a crime investigation “draw attention to how some of the people with the greatest media reach are wholly unqualified, or dangerous, or don’t have the training or the ethics that we might expect from people dealing with important issues”.
It’s easy to see why podcast bros and true crime armchair detectives have made their way on to TV. These new character tropes reflect the wacky and ludicrous realities of new media, where anyone can buy a microphone and broadcast their questionable views to millions of people. Their unparalleled arrogance and brashness make them a bright-red target for comedy, but the real joke is why they’re so famous in the first place: us, their listeners.
