When you are a TV fan, watching your favorite show every week can feel like checking in with old friends. Of course, the same could be said for podcasts. As such, the two make for an excellent combination. Most of the best TV podcasts are rewatch podcasts, where the hosts revisit a beloved series from the past, and listeners can watch right along with them. That the hosts are often actors who appeared on the show originally adds another layer of interest and enjoyment. For the bigger, watercooler releases (The Pitt, Severance, anything Game of Thrones, etc.,) networks often put out podcasts as the shows are still airing, giving the fans something to listen to as they wait a week for the next episode.
We’ve also included TV review podcasts, which chat more generally about recent releases, often alongside movies and music. Then there are those that focus more on the messy business of getting TV made in the first place. The best podcasts about TV make the viewing experience even richer and more entertaining. Here are five of them.
Office Ladies
As one of the earliest rewatch podcasts, releasing consistently since its inception, Office Ladies finished going through the 191 episodes of The Office US in 2024. What did they do next? Went through them all again! At the same time, they started exploring all sorts of other auditory tangents, sometimes not related to The Office in the slightest.
The reason the podcast has continued to work despite long outliving its initial purpose is the chemistry of hosts Angela Kinsey and Jenna Fischer, who played Angela and Pam on the beloved sitcom. While their characters were enemies, in real life, Kinsey and Fischer are best friends, and as such it is genuinely fun to hear them talk about anything at all, from their mutual love of Keanu Reeves to the new TV show they’re desperate to make, Mom Detectives.
TV is Good
Kathryn VanArendonk and Alan Sepinwall are both veteran TV critics who also happen to be friends and neighbours. They decided to team up for TV is Good, which started only this May. It’s a podcast where they discuss a new release and a thematically similar classic show each week.
VanArendonk and Sepinwall have been covering TV for decades, so they really know what they are talking about; the combination of their encyclopaedic knowledge and their long friendship makes their conversations both entertaining and enlightening. That they discuss old shows alongside the new is a welcome reflection of the fractured glut that is our streaming landscape, when people are just as likely to be binging an obscure sitcom from the nineties as they are the latest big release.
Dead Pilots Society
Although there’s more TV in existence than any person could watch in their lifetimes, what actually makes it to air or streaming is just a fraction of what the studios buy. In Dead Pilots Society, comedy TV pilots that never made it to the screen are given a table read by professional actors to show the world what it’s been missing.
Episodes are dropped monthly, and as you might expect with a concept like this, some of these dead pilots are better than others. What is always fascinating however, are the lengthy interviews with the writers which are put out alongside each dead pilot, talking about the process that led to them writing the script, what went wrong, and what has happened to them in the years since. It all adds up to a fascinating look into the good luck and hard graft it takes to get a show from inside a brain to on a TV screen.
Pop Culture Happy Hour
TV doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and as such, some of the best audio content about TV can be found on podcasts that also cover movies, music, and other cultural fields. NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour releases four episodes a week, and most weeks that includes at least one about the latest big TV show.
As is perhaps a scheduling necessity with such regular episode drops, Pop Culture Happy Hour features a rotating slate of four regular hosts, which includes Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon, and Stephen Thompson, and is backed up by other guests from NPR’s stable. This wide array of changing voices provides a welcome mix of opinions from different perspectives, although (in general) the outlook is a little sunnier than on TV is Good.
The Prestige TV Podcast
There are a vast array of rewatch podcasts out there. The Prestige TV Podcast from The Ringer makes the whole experience a little neater, covering all the hottest new shows (this year so far they’ve discussed The Pitt, Widow’s Bay, The Bear, and Cape Fear, and many others ) in one feed, largely with the same pair of presenters: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney.
Since this podcast’s episodes are released quickly after the TV ones are, and because the hosts frequently dip into the mailbag, The Prestige TV Podcast plays like an enjoyable throwback to the era of the watercooler show, when there were only a couple of TV programmes everyone was watching and they’d all be chatting about it at the office the next day.
