No genre of storytelling is more formulaic or more exhausted than true crime

Nothing new under the sun. Or at least it feels that way these days, doesn’t it? The movies are TV shows are comic books are children’s toys. The TV series are podcasts are non-fiction books are magazine articles. The radio shows are real-life stories are Twitter threads are TV series. Even the interesting movies are remakes now. Intellectual property is king, franchises rule the entertainment world and audiences are left to chew the cud from a hundred-stomached cow. Sunrise, sunset and nothing new to offer.

So it is with radio, and especially with true crime, the staple crop of narrative radio. No genre of storytelling is more formulaic or more exhausted. No narrative form more consistently fails to deliver what it promises. Yet on it goes. The genre has passed through what I think of as the four stages of modern media development: it had its viral break-out moment with the early smash hit Serial; it became meme-ified by anthology shows like My Favourite Murder and The Last Podcast on the Left; it turned into rote content with dozens of forgettable cod-investigative shows until the last bend of the barrel was fully scraped and now it has reached the cannibalistic stage, where old material is pointlessly remade and re-exhumed over and over.