When a historic cold case involving the murder of barmaid Rosie Duff in St Andrews becomes the subject of a true crime podcast, DS Karen Pirie is tasked with solving it. Her colleagues in the ITV drama are not confident they can solve the 25-year-old mystery, lamenting that they have only been put on the case because “some woke millennial’s found a microphone”.
From hard-boiled to easily digested comfort shows, the podcaster is playing an increasingly integral role in TV crime drama. In The Jetty, a peaceful northern town is unsettled by the arrival of true crime podcaster Riz (Weruche Opia) who is investigating a cold case of her own: the disappearance of schoolgirl Amy. Like in Karen Pirie, her podcast spurs the police into action and leads DC Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman) to discover murky hidden truths about the men in her community.
Only Murders in the Building, whose fourth season is now airing, takes a cosier approach to crime with podcast obsessives played by Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, and Martin Short starting their own Serial-style show to crack the case of a mysterious death in their New York apartment block. Bodkin, a Netflix series produced by the Obamas, meanwhile, took the comic lens of Only Murders … and pushed it further, cracking jokes at the expense of podcasters and their egotistical ways – following a grieving man who rocks up in an idyllic-seeming town determined to find the darkness that lies beneath, whether it exists or not, as he attempts to make the next hit podcast.
Partly this boom is due to the new storytelling possibilities it opens up – as well as questions around who we choose to trust to uncover the truth.
“There’s a sense that [podcasters] get more emotionally involved,” says Madison Walsh, creator and star of Something Undone, a Canadian series about a true crime podcast duo investigating a family massacre in the ‘80s that is now streaming on ITVX. “Police have to keep this cold distance and stay removed. Podcasters can get really involved in knowing and understanding family members as they investigate the case.”
Her co-creator Michael Musi agrees, while pointing out that their decision to set their grisly story in the audio world had less to do with co-opting a pre-existing audience than with the opportunity to spotlight a different kind of protagonist. “If you’re writing TV to tap into the zeitgeist then you’re already behind,” he says of trend-chasing. “We’re obsessed with unconventional detectives and the great thing about a podcast, like TV a drama, is that it makes you feel like you can solve a crime. Which is crazy, because it’s just in your ears while you’re vacuuming.”
Though not explicitly linked, it’s notable that the rise in popularity of true crime runs concurrent with a decline in public trust in policing. Research conducted earlier this year shows that in the UK just 40% of people in England say they currently trust the police, with the UK’s biggest force, the Metropolitan police, getting an even lower confidence score. In 2022, meanwhile, a Gallup poll found that Americans had experienced “significant declines” in trust in 11 of 16 major US institutions, including the police.
Those figures make writing a crime drama challenging. For decades police forces and detectives, especially those with a tendency to bend the rules, were held up as renegade heroes who would stop at nothing to catch a culprit. That idea feels out of touch, if not entirely lamentable, in 2024. Audiences, it seems, are more trusting in the layperson than potentially corrupt figures with the law on their side. This makes the podcaster, a role often considered to be thorough, detailed, and personable, ideal as the new face of crime fighting, whether true or imagined. There are similar routes to circumnavigating traditional character types, too. Last year’s tech thriller A Murder at the End of the World had Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) as its lead character, “a Gen Z Sherlock Holmes” who has honed her investigative skills on forums and social media.
Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire, hosts of true crime podcast RedHanded, are quick to point out that content creators can be just as compromised as those in law enforcement, though. “People may be looking at true crime producers as being the real searchers for truth but I don’t think that’s accurate,” Bala says. “They can be just as, if not more, invested in having a commercially viable angle.” By “commercially viable” she points to stories that are resolved in an orderly fashion with the right person convicted for the crime. Reality, however, isn’t always as neat as it may be on screen. “We have no agenda and we’re lucky that our listeners will listen regardless of whether we can provide the answers to a case,” Bala adds while suggesting others may not be as scrupulous.
Maguire points to the invasive tactics employed by some of those seeking information during the highly publicised searches for Gabby Petito and Nicola Bulley as reason not to think the public can simply replace the police, in reality or on TV. When Petito went missing in Florida in 2021 it was social media users who galvanised the search to find her. A spokesperson for the police department acknowledged, however, that while amateur sleuths are a help they can also be a hindrance, stating: “You have to take the good with the bad; you might get a thousand completely insane pieces of information, but that one piece that might be the missing piece to the puzzle, it’s important.”
Bulley, meanwhile, went missing while walking her dog by the river in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, last year. Her body was found 23 days later. It was confirmed soon after that a review of the investigation would focus, in part, on how “online amateur detectives pushing conspiracy theories” took hold while officials searched for the mother of two. These high-profile cases show how misinformation can spread in the unregulated world of true crime. “There is no Ofcom for podcasters,” Maguire says.
None of this is to suggest that crime drama is under threat. Musi and Walsh highlight the “overwhelming” demand from broadcasters in the UK for police narratives, for example. Finding a balance between tradition, audience habits, and real life developments, is becoming a tricky feat, though. The next iconic TV copper like a Catherine Cawood or Steve Arnott may not be “some woke millennial with a microphone”, but it’s unlikely they will be able to play by quite so many of the old rules, either.
