When I talked to the producers in the “This American Life” office the week before “Serial” débuted, in early October, there was much discussion about the nature of truth and how, in a criminal investigation, you can uncover many facts that seem to point toward a suspect’s guilt or innocence, and then learn other facts that confuse it again. And we will learn the answers as she does.” This implied that there was a thriller in the works, but he also said that the producers of “Serial”-Koenig, Dana Chivvis, and Julie Snyder-have “flipped back and forth” in their thinking about Adnan’s guilt, and so would we. Ira Glass, in his introduction to “Serial” on “This American Life,” told us that “what really happened was actually much more complicated than what the jury heard,” and that “each week, we will go with Sarah on her hunt to figure out what really happened. From the start, intentionally or not, the show was about doubt. They knew they had enough for a great show, but they didn’t know how it would end. When the show began broadcasting, Koenig and the other producers were still gathering information. After a woman named Rabia Chaudry contacted her about her friend Adnan Syed’s case, which involved a defense attorney whom Koenig had written about in the past, Koenig investigated for a year and made it the basis of the first season. In the beginning, Koenig, a “This American Life” producer, had wanted to do a spinoff podcast involving a story told over time. We felt like we were listening to a story, an entertainment, but in truth what we were listening to was much bigger than that. It made good-faith efforts to solve the dozens of small mysteries that were part of the big mystery-where people were on January 13, 1999, and what they were doing whether there was a pay phone at a certain Best Buy the implications of events at high-school dances. It provided listeners with the voices of the many people involved with the case, detailing accounts, ideas, memories. The show presented us with the very best of what radio and podcasts can do. Long anticipated and much discussed, it was a major cultural event-even though by now we expected something closer to the mood of the “Sopranos” finale than to Sherlock Holmes.Įvery episode began with the show’s contemplative theme and a prerecorded prison-call greeting, and we reflected, sadly, about the fate of a thirty-two-year-old man serving a life sentence, who may have been wrongfully convicted. I got up at six this morning to listen to the conclusion. “Serial” lured us in with the promise of a good story-a murder mystery given the “This American Life” treatment, but over an entire season, like an HBO drama. I’ve felt a listener’s kinship with the host, Sarah Koenig, and made jokes about MailChimp and the shrimp sale at the Crab Crib. Like other devotees, I’ve listened to many episodes more than once, felt sympathy for Adnan Syed and the loved ones of Hae Min Lee, confusion about Jay, and even more confusion about the cell-phone evidence. The series has given us a lot to think about. The final episode of the first season of “Serial”-the podcast to end all podcasts-came out this morning.
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