HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast: The perfect companion to the hit TV show of the summer

HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast

If you haven’t started watching this post-apocalyptic drama yet, then please take a moment to reorganise your streaming priorities and put this new television series right at the top. Once you’ve done that, make sure the show’s companion podcast series gets high priority too.

Featuring showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann – and hosted by Troy Baker – the podcast takes a behind-the-scenes look at the HBO show, which itself is an adaptation of a videogame set in a world ravaged by a fungal pandemic. Each episode, Mazin and Druckmann talk through the decisions they made and why they made them in that week’s accompanying television instalment.

The podcast is full of highly interesting insights, but some of my favourite bits so far have been around details Mazin and Druckmann decided to drop from the original video game, and the thought-process behind why they chose to deviate from the source material. Baker, who voiced one of the video game’s main characters, helps flesh these tidbits out nicely.

If you’ve seen a few episodes of the show already, then you’ll know that it is often a heart-wrenching watch – fortunately, the podcast is a cathartic salve that will aid your emotional recovery each week.

New episodes of HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast come out at the same time as the television episodes (usually every Monday).

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Stolen Hearts

This new limited series from Wondery tells the hectic true story of a Welsh police sergeant who falls in love with a very bad bloke.

Over the course of six episodes, we hear how our “leading lady”, Jill, meets a charming businessman called Dean. As it turns out, he isn’t quite who he claims to be and there are a few (major) secrets that he is keeping from Jill – until it all begins to unravel after one fateful Halloween evening in 2006.

Coupled with actor and comedian Kerry Godliman’s witty narration, the snappy scripting by Kim MacAskill drives the story forward swiftly, with so many twists and turns that my mouth dropped open at several points along the way.

I will mention that there was something a tad unsettling about the show towards the end, as it felt like the story was invading people’s private lives for the sake of a satisfying conclusion. There were also a few moments throughout the series that hinted at a darker side of Jill and Dean’s relationship, which – due to the show’s light-hearted style – got a bit glossed over.

New episodes of Stolen Hearts come out every Monday wherever you get your podcasts, or you can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Love, Janessa

The BBC World Service and the CBC are behind this new seven-part podcast, which investigates what seems to be the-mother-of-all catfishing scams.

Hosted by journalist Hannah Ajala, the show tells the story of an adult entertainment star – Janessa Brazil – whose photos have repeatedly been used to scam people. Ajala speaks to numerous victims, who all believed at some point that they were speaking to the “real” Janessa (and got swindled out of thousands of dollars in the process).

But what makes this catfishing scam a bit unusual is that there appears to be a multitude of perpetrators involved in it, too. Love, Janessa follows Ajala’s quest to figure out who’s behind it all and determine whether Janessa Brazil herself has any involvement.

Three episodes in, it doesn’t have quite the same level of intrigue as Sweet Bobby (the stellar catfish podcast series from a few years back); however, enough breadcrumbs have been laid for me to want to continue following the trail.

New episodes of Love, Janessa come out every Monday on your preferred podcast platform.