From ‘The Truth’: The Off Season
The show’s new serialized production
You see your favorite male celebrity’s name trend on Twitter and your stomach drops. Another one? You didn’t see that coming. But maybe you should have.
In a brand new four-part audio drama, The Truth podcast explores the fallout when a popular television host (played by Peter Grosz of HBO’s Veep) is ousted for sexual harassment. He retreats to an empty beach house, only to find an aspiring journalist (played by Erica Hernandez of CBS’s The Late Show) squatting there in the off-season. He sees the potential for a comeback story. She sees an opportunity for a groundbreaking piece about the growing MeToo movement.
As their respective ambitions go head to head, they take a deep dive into a world of crime, cover-ups, and whether or not redemption is even possible.
“The Off Season” is a timely and compelling thriller about how the world enables and nurtures toxic men. It’s about how maybe, this time, things will be different.
Marina Tempelsman and Niccolo Aeed co-wrote the series. In addition to writing for The Truth, Marina and Nicco’s work has been featured in The New Yorker’s “Shorts and Murmurs,” on Comedy Central, and Funny or Die, and their pilot Smüchr won Best Comedy at the New York Television Festival.
“We’ve long been interested in the two seemingly mutually exclusive mindsets that lead toward the abuse of power. The first: ‘I’m the boss, and I can get away with it.’ And the second: ‘I can’t be a villain, I’m just me,’” Marina and Nicco wrote in a statement. “In ‘The Off Season,’ we seek to explore, dissect, and deconstruct these two seemingly contradictory mindsets, which have led powerful, abusive men to believe in their own innocence, at any cost.”
The Truth creator and host Jonathan Mitchell said the serialized format of “The Off Season”, unique from the show’s usual standalone episodes, allows the story and characters to be more fleshed out.
“I wanted to try exploring characters and story in a way that’s more expansive, to have time to really let the characters express themselves and bounce off of each other,” said Jonathan. “I think “The Off Season” does this in a way that’s of a piece with many of our other stories: it’s contemporary and bold writing, with subtle performances by amazing actors, that makes compelling use of the audio medium.”
The first episode of the series, “Banished to the Hamptons,” features an introduction to the show’s characters and overarching tension. After being accused of sexual harassment live on air, television host Bruce Alvarez retreats to the Hamptons until the whole thing can blow over… if it ever will.
If you like this series, Jonathan recommends checking out other episodes of The Truth that feel tonally similar, like The Hilly Earth Society, Mall Santa, Magic Hugs, Mirror Lake, and That’s Democracy.
