Drunk Women Solving Crime, the award-winning podcast that combines comedy, true crime and drinking, deliberately stays away from certain heavy topics to respect audiences, according to the co-hosts.
Comedians and writers Catie Wilkins, Hannah George and Taylor Glenn launched the podcast in 2018 after coming up with the idea one night after thinking about how women don’t get angry when they drink but instead try to solve all the problems in the world – which is what they attempt to do on the podcast.
However, the co-hosts told PodPod in the latest episode of our podcast that despite the fact they are a comedy podcast and always try to find the humour in stories, they emphasise that they do stay away from open investigations or gruesome cases that may still trigger victims today.
“In general, the darker the case, the older it will be,” said Glenn. “So we'll go back hundreds of years for some of the cases that we do because then it's sort of safer ground to be making jokes that might veer into the darker side of things.”
True crime as a genre has been criticised in the past for often exploiting the victims through gruesome storytelling and glorifying the killers, as well as being insensitive to the families that were affected by the crime and still living today.
To combat this discourse, the co-hosts of Drunk Women Solving Crime often try to stay away from murder-related crimes and focus on smaller crimes such as fraud or heists which are less likely to have caused any physical harm or lasting trauma and therefore are safer ground to make jokes about.
“I don't think that we've ever done anything salacious, the kinds of crimes that get criticised for being too much of a spectator on misery and pain, we're not choosing those particular cases,” said Wilkins. “We're choosing typically a criminal who's an idiot and then we're finding the funny beats and the story and building around it.”
“We're not edge lords, we're not trying to be the Joe Rogan of true crime,” added George. “Sometimes we'll get quite close to the knuckle but the intention is always right and I think that's why we can always say we’re not out there trying to offend anyone.”
