The fourth season of Serial dropped at the end of this month, and by the time this newsletter goes live there will be three episodes available for download. The remaining installments premiere on Thursdays for the next six weeks because, as the name specifies, Serial’s stories are told serially: “one story—a true story—over the course of a season.” Having listened to the available episodes, and thinking, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, about the place of the show in the current true crime universe, I wonder how much that eponymous descriptor still captures what made the show so special in 2014.
Over at reality blurred, Sarah Bunting offers an excellent overview of the podcasting world before Serial redefined and electrified the medium in 2014, along with a few reservations about the new season (based on early episodes) that I also share. Bunting dings the hosts in particular for a “snarky, almost cutesy tone” that seems woefully mismatched to the season’s subject matter: the victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses at Guantánamo Bay military prison. In the comments to her piece, I posed a question that I’d like to follow up on here in more detail: Why tell this story serially at all?
One reason I’m curious about the way this story fits with an episodic format is because the first season was so explicit about why the choice was made to release episodes week-by-week to form one narrative arc. Not only was the world of podcasting different in 2014, as Bunting points out, so was the world of media consumption. By the mid-2000s, streaming services and series were becoming increasingly popular and in my memory at least the dominant entertainment model, so the thought of waiting a week in between installments of an episodic story felt almost Dickensian in its ambition. And Sarah Koenig was very up front in the first episode of season 1 about why she was telling the story of Adnan Syed’s 1999 first-degree murder conviction, and what the week-by-week format would add to that narrative.
I teach the first episode of season 1 in my Introduction to Composition classes, not because it’s perfect (and there has been many responses about the shortcomings of the season’s style and content), but because Koenig is explicit about her relationship to the material she is researching in a way I find useful for beginning writers. She notes that she is interested in the story because it “came to her,” that she had a personal connection and interest that she could not ignore. And she is also operating from a place of inquiry, not conviction: she doesn’t know where the story will lead her, and she’s open to following any lead or talking to any person to get a more complete picture of what, no matter one’s feelings on the outcome of the Syed case, was undoubtedly a clumsily executed initial investigation. The feeling, then, was one of time unfolding, of questions being posed, of needing to sit with information before moving forward. For all these reasons, the serialized format was a fascinating case of form dancing with function in a captivating way.
And I’m not sure the show’s creators have recreated that magic since. In my ranking of podcasts from Serial productions, I didn’t even think to mention this aspect of the brand, and as fellow commenter Margaret noted in the discussion thread to Bunting’s piece, it seems that many of even the most successful shows under the production company’s umbrella don’t even attempt to address or emulate this element of the “the original DNA of the show.”
So the question becomes, are there true crime properties that do exploit and explore the value of a serial format? Even if it’s impossible to recreate the specific alchemy of Serial season 1, I think there is a benefit to carefully parceling out a complicated story, especially one that involves victims of violence, and foregrounding the way that telling that story involves dead ends, wrong assumptions, and self-reflection. Too many properties these days (and in those days—I’ll save my Making a Murderer rant for another day). Maybe it’s unfair to expect Serial to be something it was rather than something it is, but I think it did teach us a lot about the intersection of true crime, narrative experimentation, and personal storytelling that ten years later the best of the genre still explores.
I shall give it a listen in my car tomorrow, Tracy. Many thanks!
Interesting stuff! I see that I’ve really been missing out as a newbie to the world of podcasts. Delighted to hear any recommendations, of course.