The story began almost three years ago, when the producers behind the hit podcast Serial got an email out of the blue inviting them to investigate an unsolved murder in a small Alabama town.

The message was odd, and a long way from a traditional journalistic lead on a story, but one of the show’s producers was intrigued enough to call its author, John B McLemore.

Over the next several months Brian Reed would spend hours speaking to his correspondent, an eccentric, heavily tattooed horologist who told him more and more about the mysterious death, and the wealthy man who, he claimed, had been bragging about the murder.

The scene of the crime, Woodstock, Alabama, a rural community in America’s south, would take on a different name in their conversations: “Shit Town”, or S-Town for short.

On Tuesday the podcast by the same name, detailing the surprising story of Reed’s unconventional relationship with McLemore and his investigation into the man’s strange tale, was published online.

And unlike its groundbreaking, record-shattering predecessor, the seven episodes were released all at once, Netflix-style – allowing listeners to gorge, instantly, on a tale that has been described as a modern-day southern gothic.



Many were more than happy to do so. “Brilliant, complex and incredibly invasive” said Vox; “Unnaturally sophisticated,” raved Vulture. “Liked Serial? Here’s why the true crime podcast S-Town is better,” wrote the New York Times. The author and broadcaster Jon Ronson instantly declared it “the best podcast I’ve ever heard”.

Onto episode 2 of s-town. It's the best podcast I've ever heard. — jon ronson (@jonronson) March 28, 2017

The story of S-Town is not easy to describe, which is one of the things that its new fans of the past few days seem particularly to appreciate. Presented by Reed and produced by Serial’s co-creator Julie Snyder, the narrative unfolds less as an episodic whodunnit strung together by cliffhangers than as an immersive, character-driven treasure hunt that turns, partway through, on a major twist.

Fittingly, the first episode sees McLemore taking Reed to a circular hedge maze he has built deep in the forest in his property, complete with closable gates that give it scores of possible solutions. Listeners, similarly, are often unclear exactly what is happening in the story, which the pair say is partly the point.

“It seemed like something you would read in a novel,” Reed said in an interview with the Guardian this week, “this accomplished clock restorer juxtaposed with the portrait of this decaying town.” That novelistic sense is what they tried to capture, Snyder has said, taking listeners into a new world where they hope they will feel compelled to stay. The seven instalments are named “chapters” rather than “episodes” as a result.

The big innovation of S-Town, however, is that it has all launched already, meaning some will plough through it in a day, others will take weeks to reach the end. “There are a couple of reasons why I think they may have done this,” says the broadcaster and writer Helen Zaltzman, who hosts the longrunning podcasts The Allusionist and Answer Me This. “First, they will have recognised that people binge-listen to podcasts already. That’s been the case throughout podcasting – people discover something they like and they they blast through the back catalogue.”

She also wonders whether the producers were surprised by Serial’s enormous success – it went on to be the most downloaded podcast in history – and particularly the citizen journalism it provoked as its revelations were dripped out, week by week, that both complemented and complicated the ongoing broadcast. “I’m not sure they were prepared for that – but by dropping it all out at once you avoid that problem.”

Speaking to the newsletter Hot Pod, Snyder offered another explanation: “I can’t totally explain, but doing a weekly thing to me … I just wasn’t feeling it ... The fact that it starts with this murder investigation. I mean, you’ve got the stink of Serial on you, and I wanted to make it clear that we’re going somewhere else.”