Award-winning comedy true-crime podcast Drunk Women Solving Crime will continue to run as a separate project if its TV adaptation gets commissioned, the producer of the show has confirmed.
The co-hosts of the podcast, Catie Wilkins, Hannah George and Taylor Glenn, confirmed to British Comedy Guide that their podcast is being transformed into a television show, working with independent British TV production studio True North Productions.
Additionally, the TV adaptation will be replacing its original creators and co-hosts with high profile comedians and celebrities for its upcoming TV adaptation. However, Wilkins, George, and Glenn will continue to be involved in the project as executive producers and added that they would also like to make a guest appearance at some point.
“Our aim is to adapt a TV format which finds a new audience who in turn can listen to the podcast with its original hosts if they wish,” the show’s producer Amanda Redman told PodPod. “Some of our listeners have been surprised we wouldn’t be fronting the TV version, but we’re excited to carry on with the success of the podcast whilst helping develop a side project from behind the camera.”
“The nature of this industry is that when you pitch anything you need high-profile people,” said Glenn. “We're not celebrities, so the fact that we've had a successful podcast is testament to how well it's done."
The podcast has been approached previously by other UK and US production companies but Redman said that it “never felt quite right” and that they were waiting to find the right fit. She said that when they met True North Productions chief creative officer Katy Thorogood and the rest of the team, they “properly listened” to the podcast and respected the show that they created, as well as wanting to continue having the original creators involved during the adaptation process.
Redman also told PodPod that it is “quite possible” that one of the previous celebrity guests that have made an appearance on one of the 250+ episodes of the podcast will make an appearance on the TV show and that they would make “brilliant ‘detectives’”.
Drunk Women Solving Crime has been running since 2018 with the same format, which involves the co-hosts testing out their “drunk detective skills” with guests including other comedians, crime writers and celebrities. The co-hosts previously told PodPod when they appeared on the podcast that their tone is “true-crime lite”, staying away from open investigations or gruesome cases so as to not offend victims of these crimes.
“In general, the darker the case, the older it will be,” Glenn told PodPod. “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.”
The co-hosts of Drunk Women Solving Crime are currently running live shows at the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe until 13 August. The live shows feature a range of guests including comics Pippa Evans and Jo Caulfield, Catherine Bohart, Susie McCabe, Sooz Kempner, and Paul Chowdhry.
“I like having both [live shows and at-home recordings, it's really nice having the balance,” Glenn told PodPod. “I love the adrenaline rush and you obviously can hear the energy and the response from the audience on the episodes that are live.”
“But the [at-home recordings], there's an intimacy to having a guest just there and you sit around and it feels more like the real detectives do it.”
The news mirrors an ongoing trend of podcasts being optioned for screen adaptations, including Stak’s Enron audio drama Boom, which the creators confirmed to PodPod in this week’s podcast episode. Other projects by Boom creators Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell, including Jackie The Ripper and The Offensive, have also reportedly been optioned for screen adaptations.
