American journalist Joseph (Rob Benedict) arrives in Saigon during the waning days of French colonization. He lived there as a child, and is thrilled to meet up with his old friend Paul after eleven years. He is also reunited with Lan (Kellie Marie Tran), once a shy little girl Joseph and Paul knew as kids, who has grown into a beautiful woman.
Joseph and Lan quickly fall for each other, and their romance provides the central story for Saigon, a fiction podcast series that will pull them and their families through years of dramatic heartbreak and bloodshed against the backdrop of Vietnam’s tumultuous history from the 1930s through to the Vietnam War.
In the publicity material, Saigon refers to itself as an "epic saga of love, blood, and revolution." While it doesn’t lack for most of those things, when it comes to the "epic" part, the proposition becomes more questionable.
The series is adapted from the bestselling 1982 novel of the same name by Anthony Grey, and that book’s 789 pages would certainly qualify as an epic. The podcast, however, is just eight episodes long (six have been released at time of writing), and are around half an hour each. Considering Saigon spans several decades, that doesn’t leave a lot of time at all to tell the story in a satisfying or entertaining way. That is the only real problem here, but it’s a big one.
Overall, Saigon feels like we’re getting the too-severely abridged version of a modern classic. Since the story spans so many years, a large portion of the dialogue is dedicated to catching up on life developments: how old their kids are and how they’ve been promoted at their job. Then, at the beginning of the next episode, they do it again. With so much time is taken on getting up to speed, there’s very little left for us to witness the characters bond and grow.
And that’s a real shame. The show has huge, heartfelt ambitions, a talented cast, and immersive sound design – it was actually recorded in Ho Chi Minh City, in a bid to aid authenticity. These are all the ingredients you’d want for a production like this.
In individual moments, Saigon feels cinematic Benedict and Tran do an excellent job at conjuring chemistry for their star-crossed couple despite so little time dedicated to fleshing out their relationship on paper. Only in certain isolated scenes, like in episode three when they are stranded together in a ramshackle hotel on a rainy night, does the show linger long enough in the moment to allow for some genuine connection.
It’s not just the events of the characters’ lives Saigon feels overwhelmed with, but historical events, too. One of the great selling points of the podcast is that Joseph and Lan’s romance is set against decades of great turmoil in Vietnam, and we learn about that history as we listen. Again, however, that fatal time crunch means it doesn't happen organically. As with the personal relationships, we’re always just hitting the big headlines, never getting the time to slow down and soak anything in. This podcast series feels like a box-ticking exercise, not a sprawling epic a listener can lose themselves.
Saigon isn’t a bad show; between the production values and the voice acting, there is a lot to like. Ultimately, the promise this series had makes the result all the more disappointing. With a runtime more befitting its epic ambitions, this show could have been something special.
