Serial tells the true tale of Free Willy’s titular whale | Podcasts

It’s 90s week in podcast land! Or at least you’d think so, judging by the nostalgic homages to kids’ entertainment from decades gone by. There’s an entire series devoted to fictional purple dinosaur Barney, plus investigative news heavyweights Serial Productions offer up a literal deep dive into a vital subject: what happened to the whale from Free Willy?

In slightly more extreme retro nostalgia, there’s also Audible’s starry new Agatha Christie adaptation, with Game of Thrones’s Peter Dinklage playing Poirot in Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He’s joined by Himesh Patel, as Hastings, and Harriet Walter. Does the fact that they’ve started at the very beginning of Christie’s canon mean they’re planning to do every single book? We certainly wouldn’t object.

But if that thought strikes terror into your time-pressed mind, don’t worry: we’ve got a roundup of the best listens for those of you who want to dip into long-running shows without having to plough through the entire back catalogue. Although you could also take inspiration from the proliferation of 1990s podcasts: wait 30 years for a retro nostalgia pod about it, then listen to the highlights.

Alexi Duggins
Deputy TV editor

Picks of the week

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Audible, all episodes available now
Peter Dinklage is Hercule Poirot in this stunningly cast take on Agatha Christie’s debut novel. Rob Delaney, Harriet Walter, Jessica Gunning and Himesh Patel join him in a high-budget, immersive production. Dinklage’s Poirot ranges from gravelly force of nature to wise, twinkly soul in the tale of a matriarch’s murder on the country estate where the Belgian detective’s friend Captain Hastings is recuperating from the first world war. Alexi Duggins

The Good Whale
Widely available, episodes weekly
For an iconic investigative franchise such as Serial, the whale in 90s movie Free Willy isn’t an obvious topic. But this fascinating series is a deep dive into the story of what happened to the creature, from its unhealthy time in captivity to becoming a Hollywood star, to the PR-driven campaign to actually free him and, sadly, how extremely difficult that proved to be. AD

The Quilt
Widely available, episodes weekly
Queer Britain is the UK’s first LGBTQ+ museum and it partners with the producers of podcast The Log Books to create this moving new series. Hosts Tash Walker and Adam Zmith travel the UK to collect stories, starting in Norfolk where a trans woman in her 70s makes them cry with an old photograph. Hollie Richardson

Generation Barney
Widely available, episodes weekly
Can a giant purple dinosaur give a generation the comfort they need in turbulent times? He certainly revolutionised the children’s TV landscape of the 1990s, giving younger viewers their first superstar. Host Sabrina Herrera is full of joy as she retells the story of the dino who, like any good kids’ television character, provoked hate in exasperated parents. Hannah Verdier

Lady Mafia
Widely available, episodes weekly
Sara King earned her reputation as “the female Bernie Madoff” by allegedly loan-sharking her way to a fortune, then spending it on jewellery, cars and a long-term stay at Las Vegas’s Wynn Resort. Now, Michelle McPhee lets the lawyer tell her side of the story – and why she doesn’t see herself as a con artist. HV

There’s a podcast for that

This week, Rachel Aroesti chooses five of the best podcasts you can dip in and out of, from a Radio 4 classic to Alex Cooper’s $60m show

Call Her Daddy
Most podcasts, no matter how popular, feel like cult concerns; their intimate in-jokes and freewheeling vibe give the impression that they exist outside the mainstream cultural conversation. Even Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy – the second-most listened-to pod on the planet – has the air of an exclusive club. Occasionally, however, Cooper performs feats of headline-grabbing cut-through. In the past few months, the show – which is beloved for its sex-positive take on womanhood – has made the news with interviews with Katy Perry (on her disastrous comeback) and Kamala Harris (on her family life and her campaign); episodes that become required listening for anyone attempting to stay on top of the zeitgeist.

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Nymphet Alumni
If you’ve ever found yourself stumped by endlessly rebooting TikTok aesthetics or baffled by the latest (as in, 10 minutes ago) trends, Nymphet Alumni is here to help. Hosting trio Biz Sherbert, Sam Cummins and Alexi Alario tackle bleeding-edge fashion and extremely online phenomena – from “mogging” to Mormon style – in a manner that is unabashedly literate but never inaccessible. Sometimes, they even name trends themselves (see: blokette, in which football shirts and Sambas meet girly-girl attire), as well as looking back on the 20th-century fashion roots of various revivals. Dip in to feel like you understand the modern world, even if it’s just for an hour.

Off Menu
Some podcasts are successful regardless – or sometimes even in spite of – their guests, while others depend more on the energy of the celebrity involved. At this point, Ed Gamble and James Acaster are consummate professionals when it comes to extracting dream-meal-based banter from their interviewees, but the episodes of Off Menu really worth hearing involve guests with staunchly eccentric tastes and the resulting hysterical spiral of callbacks. Highlights include Victoria Coren-Mitchell’s dinner party sandwiches, Ivo Graham and his Yeo Valley yoghurt, Nicola Coughlan’s Robbie Williams wrap and the peerless madness of The Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas, “Soft Touch” and the buried lamb.

Desert Island Discs
Very few podcasts have decades-long archives to dive back into, let alone one that goes back to the 1940s. But that’s what you get when you convert the UK’s longest-running radio show into a podcast. There are now 2,482 episodes of Desert Island Discs – whose taste-based premise has proven an influential template for the contemporary podcast (see the aforementioned Off Menu and many more) – available to dip into. The back catalogue alone is a fascinating cultural chronicle, featuring hugely famous guests, along with many, many others who have faded into obscurity.

Good One
That old adage about analysis destroying comedy has been comprehensively debunked by a critical establishment now far more inclined to take standup seriously. And Good Ones, “a podcast about jokes” from Vulture’s Jesse David Fox, takes comedy very seriously indeed. With guests including John Early, Alex Edelman, Jack Whitehall and Joel Kim Booster, Fox goes extremely deep into the craft and context behind routines and sketches: we’re talking two-hour-plus postmortems on standup shows. It’s a bit too intense for a binge listen – in moderation, however, it’s a thrilling and insightful peek behind the curtain.

Why not try …

• Best Medicine with Kiri Pritchard-McLean returns for a second series, with comedians, doctors, scientists and historians celebrating marvellous medical breakthroughs.

• The Good Sex Project, in which Melody Thomas goes on a quest to understand how to do it right.

• Journalist and documentary-maker Lucy Sherriff’s investigation into the sudden disappearance of a wealthy widow, Where’s Dia?