Welcome to this week's Recommendation Engine from Podcast Rex, rounding up the week in podcast reviews. Get this in an email each week by signing up to be a supporter of Podcast Rex from £3.99.
Platforms
Apple Podcasts: New Shows
The Romesh Ranganathan Show (Listen)
The Good, The Bad and the Football (Folding Pocket)
The Unprocessed Truth (Spirit)
Women’s Football Weekly (BBC Radio 5 Live)
Spotify: New & 🔥
States of Independence (Talkhouse/Cup & Nuzzle)
Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always)
Amazon Music: Best Podcasts of the Week
Gangster: The Story of the Black Widow (BBC Radio 5 Live)
Friday Night Comedy (BBC Radio 4)
The Jack & Ash Show (Audio Always)
Pocket Casts: Featured
Simpsons Declassified (Audacy)
Reviews
Miranda Sawyer in the Observer
- Pride and Prejudice (Audible) - “I am, broadly, an Austen refusnik. Usually, I can’t bring myself to care about the Bennet sisters’ predicament – not even charismatic, modern Lizzy. I’m like Mr Bennet, except I’m exasperated even more quickly by the flapping and concerns of the “silliest girls in the country”. But this version is so well done, so delightful, that I gobbled up the entire series in a couple of days. The Netflix adaptation will have to be excellent to beat this.”
- How To Get Wet When You’re Dry (Rethink) - “The series has insight and warmth in there and, with tighter production, it could become a great podcast. Sex is a fascinating topic and recovered addicts make the most interesting interviewees.”
Fiona Sturges in the FT
- A Dose of Dandy (ind.) - “Could this be satire? There’s certainly something comic about two young men waxing lyrical about the wonder of tweed and tulips. But to spend an hour in their company is to realise they are earnest in their desire to live their lives as if in a PG Wodehouse novel.”
Patricia Nicol in the Sunday Times
- Hotels with History (Perowne International) - “Doubtless a further issue is that this is a PR podcast: Perowne is either showcasing existing clients or possibly stealth-pitching them, so is hardly going to dish the dirt. But still, where are the staff? They are frequently alluded to here, but never given a voice, and what any fool knows about any hospitality setting that truly delivers is that it is the workers that make all the difference. Stories from behind the green baize door would have made it sing.”
James Marriott in the Times
- The Romesh Ranganathan Show (Listen) - “This situation is getting out of hand. I fear the madness of the celebrity-on-celebrity interview podcast won’t stop until every celebrity has interviewed literally every other celebrity. Only when Judi Dench has spent three hours shooting the breeze with Bad Bunny and Andrew Tate has had his obligatory “sit down” with Ian McEwan will we finally call a halt to proceedings.”
★★★★★
Gerard O’Donovan in the Daily Telegraph
- Leading Professionals (ind.) - “Few business podcast hosts can boast the academic credentials of Prof Laura Empson… which means she attracts seriously senior guests to her new podcast series on business leadership, beginning tonight with an absorbing chat about leading in uncertain times with Dr Fabien Curto Millet, a former student of hers at Oxford who has gone on to become Chief Economist at Google”
- When Science Finds a Way (Chalk and Blade) - “We’re in Brazil looking at how artificial intelligence and data science are used to predict outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases like dengue and Zika.”
Listings
Clair Woodward in the Sunday Times
- Hotels with History (Perowne International)
- Wisecrack (Tenderfoot TV)
- A Question of Science (BBC Studios/Francis Crick Institute)
- The Candid Frame — Conversations on Photography (ind.)
- The President and the Emperor (ind.)
The Guardian’s Best Podcasts of the Week
- Stockton Street (X Originals) - Pick of the Week
- Country of Dust (ind.)
- Joe and James Fact Up (Audio Always)
- World of Secrets: Death in Dubai (BBC Sounds)
- Tortured Justice With Omar Jimenez (CNN)
The Guardian Weekly’s Podcast of the Week
In the Saturday Guardian magazine
And in the Guardian’s Guide newsletter
In the Radio Times
- Bold Politics with Zack Polanski (ind.) - Pick of the Week
- The Water Road (ind.)
- Fiasco: Benghazi (Pushkin)
- Hormones and Handstands (ind.)
In i Weekend
- Talk ‘90s To Me (Podmasters) ★★★★☆
- The History Podcast: The Fort (BBC Radio 4) ★★★★☆
- Dish (Cold Glass) ★★★★★
- Unicorn Girl (Apple TV+) ★★★☆☆
Heat’s Top of the Pods
Woman Magazine’s Listen Up section
Scott Bryan in Great British Podcasts
