I don’t watch a ton of TV anymore.
And I’m not a consumer of youtube. Never really liked it.
Nevertheless, I like to watch one, and only one, hour of a tv series (or a contiguous block of a movie) as part of each nights wind-down routine.
I’m a huge consumer of podcasts.
I’ve been consuming podcasts of movie reviews for a long time. Mostly movies I watched a long time ago. Often movies I won’t see and just want to get a vibe for the plot and quality.
I knew (way deep down) that podcasts make movies better. But I guess I’d never really thought it all through carefully.
A long time ago I decided to watch twin peaks for the first time and purchased a podcast listen-along for each episode. This one, I believe.
It was fantastic. But this was a long time ago, and I guess I forgot.
Over this past holiday break, I decided to re-watch lost, one ep/day. I also decided to go out an find a good re-watch companion podcast to go with it.
I found one, it was okay, but not great. I dumped it after s1.
Then I found “the hatch” podcast.
- Insightful discussions.
- Interviews with the cast and crew.
- Covers every single episode, in order, no matter what.
I disliked s6 and the finale the first time through. I skipped through the flash-sideways portions of s6 the second time through. But this time…
I finally understand + love s6 and the finale (not ashamed to say my eyes were moist).
The difference fan-experts make!
My re-watch experience was elevated.
Now I’m ruined. I want this for all of my tv consumption going forward and all my re-watch binges.
There’s no going back. And I suspect the quality is rarely going to be this high.
Some series’ I’ve re-watched many times that I will pair with a companion podcast “next time”:
- archive 81
- altered carbon
- the oa
- x-files
- fringe
- the expanse
- westworld
- battlestar galactica
- stargate universe
- firefly
- and on…
And the many others that I’ve watch once and were great, requiring future re-watch (mr robot, peripheral, umbrella academy, dark, hannibal, mind hunter, black mirror and on.)
By my taste, clearly I’m a teenager of the ’90s :)
And why not book-companion podcasts? I consume a ton of books every year, some must be covered by great reviewers + talkers.
I consume a few book review podcasts, but they are to get recommendations, not retrospective breakdowns to make me love the book 10x more.
Also, there must be more people like me that do/would enjoy this.
Surely it is good marketing strategy in 2025 for books+tv+movies to have companion podcasts. Might be hard to be unbiased if they’re paid, but deep dives into the content only makes the content better. Always has.