The Third Season of ‘Serial’ Podcast is here
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This season means to look at the entire criminal justice system from a fresh perspective. In the season trailer, Koenig said, “I don’t think we can understand how the criminal justice system works by interrogating one extraordinary case; ordinary cases are where we need to look.” The idea for the third season came from the first season, which explored Baltimore teenager, Adnan Syed’s questionable conviction for killing his teenage girlfriend, Hae Min Lee in 1999, based on a flawed case.
The new season will follow a few storylines over different scenes, as opposed to concentrating on a single story. It will track criminal cases from the court to defendants’ and witness’ homes. “One courthouse told week by week,” Koenig said, clarifying that the show makers were allowed uncommon access to the city’s courts and offices.
‘Serial’ became a social phenomenon and became the catalyst for the increase in the development of podcasts and other types of audio storytelling. It debuted its first season in 2014 as a spinoff of the pioneering public radio show “This American life”, and it did not exactly scream hit.
However, the podcast has a huge following seeing as fans of the show were quick to mock pop culture celebrity, Kim Kardashian for discovering the show late. “I’m on episode four now and I’m dying to know what you guys think?” The Keeping up with the Kardashians star tweeted. “Is he guilty or innocent?”
“All of my MySpace friends won’t stop BBMing me about it.” One fan commented, while another teased, “Was this a scheduled tweet from 2014?”
The show has influenced a few real-world events. It would seem that Koenig correctly came to the conclusion that the public had a large appetite for true crime stories, and a willingness to find out the minute details hidden in these cases.
Authorities in Maryland reopened Syed’s case, and recently, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals maintained Syed’s claims that he got “ineffective assistance of counsel’ and said he had the privilege to another hearing.
The sophomore season in 2015 followed the account of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was held hostage by the Taliban. In 2017, the podcast propelled a spinoff, ‘S-Town’, and unlike ‘Serial’, the makers put out all of its episodes in one day, following Netflix’s streaming series blueprint but also with the intent of having it play out like a novel.