I really enjoy metahumor, and Finnemore’s talent for it is on full display in this series—even to the extent of calling himself out on overreliance on it. Doesn’t bother me, though!

I’ve been tempering my praise of this series through this relisten, but the time travel sketch in the finale is excellent, and there are other top notch examples of Finnemore’s humor scattered throughout.

What’s more, the recordings of this series on the Internet Archive are actual recordings and have bits of continuity announcer on either end of the episodes. I just love that, for reasons I can’t fully articulate, and I wish all the series were like that.

This show continues to be fun, even if it wears off its genius on the third run. Some parts still make me laugh out loud, though!

This is the third time I’ve listened to this series in the past five years, and I wonder if I’m rating it a bit low because of that. At any rate, I couldn’t help myself from trying it again after finishing Cabin Pressure. I might like this show even better—Finnemore has more freedom to show off his gift for words and his intricate plotting and callbacks.

This series feels like Finnemore kicking things up a notch. There are some interesting new character arcs in play, and it’s fun to see Finnemore playing with the fact that one of his actors is now taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes. He’s also clearly having fun subverting some audience expectations with stories and characters.

I hadn’t heard this series before, and it was fun to come back to it! I’m really excited for Series 4 and the finale episodes.

My journey through Cabin Pressure continues! I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve previously listened to—definitely not the Christmas special, but probably the rest of it. At any rate, it continues to have exceptional writing and lovely acting. Radio is underrated, and John Finnemore is perhaps the best example of that.

It’s been ages since I’ve listened to this, though I’ve listened to some of John Finnemore’s other work in the meantime. It’s such an excellent show: brilliantly written, well acted, and a real joy to listen to.

I’m confident I haven’t listened to all four series, though I can’t remember which bits I’ve missed. Looking forward to finding out!

There’s a great John Finnemore sketch that involves a ridiculous number of nested stories, and I’m thinking of it as I approach the end of Frankenstein (a novel in the form of letters sent by a man recounting conversations with Frankenstein, who quotes other letters, etc.).

Since April, I’ve gotten sucked into the Slow Horses British spy series after really enjoying the Apple TV+ adaptation. I’ve been powering through all the full-length novels and am now reading 2021’s Slough House, which features a character who’s survived a bullet wound to the head. Her description stood out to me for one particular detail, though:

Her hair was different. Maybe that’s what death does to you. I twas still mostly red but now punkishly short, with a white stripe across her left temple where the bullet had passed…

I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings. I discovered podcasts in their infancy, during my final years of high school, and started really getting into them near the end of college.