The Good Whale (Serial/New York Times)
Fashion Neurosis With Bella Freud (bellafreud.com)
Archive on 4: A Child’s Christmas (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Here are a couple of podcasts this week that I’ve come to rather late. This is partly due to the Guardian/Observer strike, which has meant that this column hasn’t appeared for a fortnight, and partly due to a mild sense of resentment that says more about me than the actual shows.
First up, Serial’s latest, The Good Whale. Made for the New York Times, this is a six-part documentary series about Keiko, the orca, or killer whale, that played Willy in Free Willy, the hugely successful 1993 family movie. Keiko was living fairly happily in a marine park in Mexico, much loved by the entire country, a “national pet” surrounded by affection but not in the most suitable environment: his tank was too small, and filled with treated water that was often unclean.
Perhaps it was inevitable that when Free Willy was released, its audience – mostly kids – decided that the real-life Willy must also be freed. Which sounds great, except that Keiko had never lived in an orca pod or, indeed, in the sea. He couldn’t speak the language (each orca pod has its own dialect); he was hopelessly unfit – “a couch potato”, says the series’ presenter Daniel Alarcón. Keiko couldn’t even catch wild fish – he’d only ever had them fed to him. Still, everyone hoped for a better life for him. When he was moved from Mexico to the US, to be trained to live in the wild, thousands of local people turned up to wave him off. A mariachi band played. People cried. This genuine Keiko adoration is the underlying theme of the series. Everyone in it cares for him and thinks they know best, but things don’t always go well.
God, this is a weirdly moving, engaging tale. I was initially resistant, having already heard Hooked on Freddie, an excellent – and fun – UK podcast about a wild dolphin who also affected the lives of many around him. I knew The Good Whale would not be a jokefest. Coming from Serial and the NYT, I knew it would be beautifully made, but also earnest through and through. How could that tone work for a whale tale? Also Keiko’s story is relatively low stakes compared to most Serial shows. And yet, The Good Whale is great: impeccably researched, hosted and paced. Plus, episode five – an imagined song of the orca – is so odd and meta and not Serial-y, it makes the whole series. Enjoy!
The second podcast I had a bad feeling about is Fashion Neurosis, an interview show from fashion designer Bella Freud. She is the daughter of artist Lucian, but it’s her great-grandfather Sigmund she’s channelling here. Each guest has to lie down on a couch for their interview, which is based around what they wear. Freud isn’t a qualified psychotherapist, and she’s facing her guest, rather than seated behind them, so the lounging is a conceit rather than anything properly therapeutic. Perhaps this means that the guest feels less inhibited, but you imagine not, because each episode is filmed (beautifully) so there’s a camera positioned directly above them like a beady eye. (I don’t like that the guests wear shoes on the couch, so I can’t watch.)
Anyway. Freud’s interviewees, who include Kate Moss, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kim Gordon, Jonathan Anderson, are well-known in both senses: they’re celebrities, and often they are her friends. This is what grates. It’s hard to properly interview your pals, and Freud, though she does her research, can be alienatingly gushing, telling her guests they look fantastic, that their legs are fabulous, and their style (“so you!”) is to die for. We need a little more. Actually, perhaps we need a little less; if we lost the blether where Freud and her subject murmur things such as “Oh Christian [Louboutin] is so amazing, he’s so creative and he’s just there whenever you need him”, then we’d be left with an interesting listen. I especially enjoy it when the guests talk about their teenage clothes, what they yearned for. So, yes, this is worth your while. Just hop through the slushy longueurs.
Finally, Archive on 4: A Child’s Christmas gave me my first proper dose of festive spirit this year (just in time!). Cerys Matthews, a woman who is all about magic, whose voice is full of childlike wonder, is the perfect presenter for this show about how authors write Christmas for kids. Some lovely archive (powerful Dylan Thomas, grumpy Raymond Briggs), alongside new interviews with Katherine Rundell, Mark Gatiss and Lemn Sissay shed light on how receptive children are to the delight and the darkness of Christmas time.
I found Sissay very moving when he discussed Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy Beaker series. Tracy lives in a children’s home, as Sissay did from age 12 to 18. He talks about Christmas stories being told from the point of view of looking into a house, warmly lit with lights; or looking out into the dark, not knowing that a child is outside, yearning to belong. “To be a child without a family at Christmas is the most painful story of all,” he says. Yes.
