A very funny podcast…
The satirical, spoof newspaper The Onion is constantly one of the funniest things on the internet so it’s no surprise that their parody of the true crime podcast explosion would be on the money. What issurprising is just how scathing this podcast is. By calling out the hypocrisy, delusions of grandeur and general insincerity of the true crime pocdcast, The Onion has cast a shadow on the entire industry…
A Very Fateful Murder sees fictional podcast host David Pascall employing a super computer to identify the perfect murder. It can’t just be any old murder though, it must be a metaphor for small town America, the death of industry, beauty standards, GM foods etc etc. Pascall eventually comes across the case of Hayley Price, a tragic and ‘totally hot’ murdered teenager in the sleepy town of Bluff Springs, Nebraska.
Pascall’s shtick is the perfect pastiche of Serial and S-Town with the New York dwelling host struggling to contain his glee at the grisly nature of Hayley’s brutal murder and marvelling at how people outside of New York don’t lock their doors. A Very Fateful Murder is very funny but it is also chilling and to be honest it left a bad taste in my own fat mouth in terms of all the true crime podcasts and TV shows that I have consumed over the last year or so. Should these terrible and life changing cases really be mined so cynically for entertainment? This podcast forces the listener to ask themselves that uncomfortable question, holding a black mirror to society to face a disturbing truth.
At roughly ten minutes an episode and six episodes in the whole run, A Very Fatal Murder is vital listening to anyone who has ever listened to a true crime podcast. As The Onion so often does, this podcast forced me to change the way I think about the world. An important and poignant podcast that accurately reflects the tumultuous time in which it has been released.
While it leans heavily on Welcome to Night Vale, A Very Fatal Murder still stands shakily on its own two feet… before being brutally murdered and pursued by the next investigative journalist looking to make a name for themselves.