Serial

Series overview

Koenig has said that Serial is "about the basics: love and death and justice and truth. All these big, big things." She also has noted, "this is not an original idea. Maybe in podcast form it is, and trying to do it as a documentary story is really, really hard. But trying to do it as a serial, this is as old as Dickens."

New York Magazine reported that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, directors of The Lego Movie and the film 21 Jump Street, would be producing a television program about the podcast that will take a "behind-the-scenes approach that details how Koenig went from virtual anonymity to creating one of 2014's biggest cultural phenomenons".

Season 1 (2014)

On February 9, 2015, Scott Pelley of CBS News reported Serial's season 1 episodes had been downloaded more than 68 million times. By February 2016, the episodes had been downloaded over 80 million times.

Season 1 investigated the 1999 Killing of Hae Min Lee (Korean: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. She was last seen at about 3 p.m. on January 13, 1999. Her corpse was discovered on February 9 in Leakin Park and identified two days later.

The case was immediately treated as a homicide. On February 12, an anonymous source contacted authorities and suggested that Adnan Masud Syed, Lee's ex-boyfriend, might be a suspect. Syed was arrested on February 28 at 6 a.m. and charged with first-degree murder, which led to "some closure and some peace" for Lee's family. A memorial service for Lee was held on March 11 at Woodlawn High School.

Syed's first trial ended in a mistrial, but, after a six-week second trial, Syed was found guilty of Lee's murder on February 25, 2000, and was given a life sentence. On September 19, 2022, a judge, citing the prosecution's failure to hand over potentially beneficial evidence to the defense, overturned the conviction. Syed, after 23 years in prison, went free. After a lengthy appeal process, a judge reinstated the murder conviction in March 2025, but reduced Syed's sentence. As a consequence, he does not have to return to prison but will remain convicted of first-degree premeditated murder.

Hae Min Lee – 18-year-old high school student and athlete, abducted in January 1999 and found dead the next month

Adnan Syed – former boyfriend of Lee who was convicted of killing her in 2000. His conviction was vacated in 2022 – nearly eight years after the podcast was published – after prosecutors filed a motion stating that "the state no longer has confidence in the integrity of the conviction."

Jay Wilds – key witness at Syed's trial and professed accomplice of Syed

Stephanie McPherson – Jay's girlfriend and close friend and classmate of Syed

Season 2 (2015–16)

In September 2015, The New York Times reported the second season would focus on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. A spokesperson for Serial only said, "Over the last few months they've been reporting on a variety of stories for both seasons 2 and 3 of Serial, along with other podcast projects." The first episode of the season was released, without any previous release date announcement, on December 10, 2015.

For season 2, Koenig teamed up with Mark Boal, the Academy Award–winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, and his production company, Page 1. Boal had conducted a series of interviews with Bergdahl as part of a film production he was working on, and both Boal and Bergdahl gave Koenig permission to use those excerpts of those recorded interviews in episodes of Serial. As Koenig stated in season 2's first episode: "They'd come to us saying 'hey, we've been doing all this reporting on the story, and we've also got this tape. Do you think you might want to listen?' And yes, we did, and we were kind of blown away, and so we began working with them. They shared their research with us, and also put us in touch with many of their sources... We don't have anything to do with their movie, but Mark and Page 1 are our partners for Season 2."

On December 14, 2015, General Robert B. Abrams, head of United States Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina ordered that Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion.

Sarah Koenig announced on January 12, 2016, that the podcast schedule would be changed to every other week to allow for deeper reporting, and to add more information than initially planned. Internet radio service Pandora Radio streamed the second season of Serial.

On November 3, 2017, military judge Col. Jeffery R. Nance rendered a verdict dishonorably discharging Bergdahl from the Army, reducing his rank to private and requiring forfeit of some of his pay for ten months and no prison time. The verdict is subject to review by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, and may also be appealed to the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals. After the sentencing, Serial announced its team to be working on a "coda" for the season.

Season 3 (2018)

Season 3 is meant to be an analysis of the normal operation of the American criminal justice system, as opposed to the previous two seasons, which followed "extraordinary" cases. K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair commented that the third season was "an overarching account of an institution: the criminal-justice system, writ large". Koenig has described season 3 as "a year watching ordinary criminal justice, in the least exceptional, most middle-of-the-road, most middle-of-the-country place we could find: Cleveland." Reported by Emmanuel Dzotsi, episodes follow different cases and are taped in Greater Cleveland, with particular focus on cases before the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas at the Justice Center Complex in Downtown Cleveland.

Season 4: Guantánamo (2024)

A fourth season, subtitled Guantánamo, focusing on the history of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, was announced in February 2024. The nine-episode season premiered with two episodes on March 28, 2024, with episodes released weekly thereafter. Season 4 is produced by Jessica Weisberg, with Koenig co-hosting the season with Serial producer Dana Chivvis. Koenig, Chivvis and their team interviewed over 100 people, including guards, interrogators, commanders, lawyers, chaplains, translators and former prisoners. The season has been described as "a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in its evolution, who know things the rest of us don't about what it's like to be caught inside an improvised justice system."

Episodes

Development and release

The concept for Serial originated with an experiment in Koenig's basement. Koenig and Snyder had pitched a different idea at a staff meeting for a weekly program on events during the previous seven days, which staff members received without enthusiasm. When Ira Glass asked Koenig if she had any other ideas, she mentioned podcasting a story that unfolded over time, a serialized narrative. In an interview with Mother Jones, she explained that each episode would return to the same story, telling the next chapter of a long, true narrative.

Episode one of the series was released on October 3, 2014, with additional episodes released weekly online. Glass introduced it as a spinoff of his popular radio program, This American Life, and aired episode one on his show. He explained, "We want to give you the same experience you get from a great HBO or Netflix series, where you get caught up with the characters and the thing unfolds week after week, but with a true story, and no pictures. Like House of Cards, but you can enjoy it while you're driving."

Music

Nicholas Thorburn released the soundtrack for Serial on October 17, 2014. It includes 15 tracks, all short instrumentals, and is available at the Bandcamp site or streamed from several reviewing sites.

Mark Henry Phillips, who mixes the show, has also provided original scores.

Musical credits for Season 2 include Thorburn and Phillips, as well as Fritz Myers and staff music editor Kate Bilinski.

Funding

Serial's launch was sponsored by Mailchimp, a frequent podcast advertiser, and salaried staff positions were initially funded by WBEZ. Admitting the podcast was funded from This American Life's budget during the launch, producer Koenig noted that Serial would eventually need to generate its own funding. She said, "Everyone's saying 'It's podcasting! It's internet! Of course there'll be money somewhere.' We're not exactly sure yet." Dana Chivvis, another producer, observed that, since the industry is still in its infancy, a business model for podcasting has yet to be established.

Towards the end of the first season, producers asked for public donations to fund a second season. Within a week, the staff of Serial posted an announcement that a second season has been made possible by donations and sponsorship.

In July 2020 Serial Productions (the company behind the Serial podcast) was acquired by The New York Times. Techcrunch reported that the deal was valued at $25 million and noted that Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder would become Times employees as a result of the sale.

Reception

Season 1 (2014)

The first season of Serial was both culturally popular and critically well received. Serial was ranked at No. 1 on iTunes even before it debuted, leading iTunes rankings for over three months, well after the first season ended. It also broke records as the fastest podcast ever to reach 5 million downloads at Apple's iTunes store. David Carr in The New York Times called Serial "Podcasting's first breakout hit." The Guardian characterized it as a "new genre of audio storytelling".

Introducing a PBS NewsHour segment about Serial, Judy Woodruff noted that it is "an unexpected phenomenon", and Hari Sreenivasan mentioned it has "five million downloads on iTunes, far more than any other podcast in history".

Calling the characters "rich and intriguing", The Daily Californian noted similarities to the film The Thin Blue Line (1988), and described the podcast as "gripping" and the story as "thrilling", while applauding the series for giving "listeners a unique opportunity to humanize the players".

Slate's reviewer pointed out that Serial is not escapist and went on to note: "Someone in the show is not telling the truth about something very sinister. That's the narrative tension that makes Serial not only compelling but also unlike anything I can remember watching or reading before." The Baltimore Sun commented on the inherently riveting subject matter and noted that the top-notch reporting and podcast format yield "a novel twist on the investigative long-form piece".

A critique from the journalism community was more qualified. First noting that some people believe there is a "podcast renaissance", the reviewer from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab observed that even though podcasts are not new, they are not yet mainstream.

Not all critiques of the podcasting format have been as equivocal. PopMatters observed that podcasting is a new distribution model, very different from television as a distribution model because it gives users access to media and the freedom to listen to episodes of a long-form story while doing other things. The reviewer applauded the focus on long-form journalism and added, "Suddenly you feel like the full promise of podcasting has just been unleashed. That long-form narrative nonfiction is really the way to best leverage the potential of podcasting as a distribution model."

Season 2 (2015–16)

The much-anticipated second season of Serial was released in December 2015. The subject of Season 2 was met with widespread skepticism. Vastly different from the popular murder-mystery story that Season 1 investigated, Season 2's focus on the story behind the U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who disappeared from his post in Afghanistan in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban and subsequently released in 2014, was contentious due in part to the controversial views of the soldier's departure from his post and also because of the high-profile court martial proceeding for his alleged desertion.

The Guardian summarized the season by saying Koenig and her team managed to add to the conversation: "Not only did they let Bergdahl speak for himself, via a series of interviews with the film-maker Mark Boal, but they also asked and answered a question that no one – including the military or the US government – had seemingly bothered to investigate."

Season 2 of Serial was less about solving a mystery and more about long-term investigative reporting and storytelling. Zach Baron of GQ Magazine reported that he liked the season overall and thought it gave an invaluable document of what it is like to serve in modern wars, but said it was also "something of a cultural disappointment, at least compared to last season."

Similar to Season 1's critical response, some felt that the lack of answers was "infuriating."

Switching to a bi-weekly schedule mid-season caused some to believe the series was losing momentum. However, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sarah Koenig and executive producer Julie Snyder said the download numbers for Season 2 were 50 million, higher than the numbers were by the time Season 1 ended.

Season 3 (2018)

Season 3 received mostly positive reviews. Andrew Liptak at The Verge called it a "return to form". Nicholas Quah at Vulture called it "ambitious, addictive, and completely different".

Season 3 was tied for the 2019 Media for a Just Society Award in radio by the NCCD.

Related podcasts

The popularity of Serial and the intrigue of the case it covered has spawned several companion podcasts, such as Crime Writers on Serial, The Serial Serial, and Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed, the latter produced by Rabia Chaudry. S-Town, a 2017 collaboration between the teams of This American Life and Serial, was released to mixed reviews. Also, Nice White Parents and The Improvement Association were yet other related podcast. The Coldest Case in Laramie was produced by Serial Productions in 2023.

Parodies

Parodies of Serial have targeted the show's style, its fans' obsessive tendencies, Koenig's curiosity and uncertainties, the charts and graphics posted on the show's website, and the podcast's sponsor MailChimp (especially the meme "MailKimp").

The New Yorker ran a cartoon based on Serial.

When Koenig appeared on The Colbert Report, Colbert noted that the finale of Serial would be released in competition with Colbert's last episode.

Saturday Night Live spoofed Serial with a sketch investigating Kris Kringle, who for years has allegedly been leaving presents in people's homes.

As part of the promotion for the video game Halo 5: Guardians, developer 343 Industries put out a multi-part, in-universe podcast called Hunt the Truth, investigating the history of the series protagonist, the Master Chief, John-117. Narrated by comedian Keegan-Michael Key as fictional reporter Benjamin Giraud, it is delivered in the style of the Serial podcast, including the narration delivery style of Sarah Koenig and audio style of her in-person and over-the-phone interviews.

Funny or Die released a short video starring Michaela Watkins as a frantic Koenig—unsure of how she will end the series—recording the final episode of Serial. The video mimics Serial's style, including asides to the audience demarcated by the Serial theme music. The "Mail Kimp" and "Crab Crib" memes are referenced in the popular video, which had over 880,000 views as of October 2015, placing it in the website's "Immortal: Best of the Best" video category.

In the summer of 2015, Under the Gun Theater developed an improvised show format entitled One Story Told Week by Week which satirized Serial. According to Chicago Tribune writer, Nina Metz, the host parodied Koenig's "distinctively intimate and inquisitive vocal delivery," as well as contained moments that satirized the podcast's "attempt at amateur sleuthing."

Sarah Koenig made a cameo appearance in an episode of the animated comedy series BoJack Horseman as a ringtone, parodying her introduction to episodes of the podcast.