Take a gripping science fiction story that plays on our fears about the future while recasting old-school radio drama for the internet age. Add the fact that it has already garnered a massive audience in its original Spanish language iteration. Throw in two gifted Hollywood actors with a heavy dollop of on-air chemistry, and what do you have? Podcast gold, people.
I’m talking, of course, about Case 63, the English-language adaptation of Caso 63, a three-season Chilean podcast that engrossed the Spanish-speaking world when the first episodes aired at the end of 2020, at the height of pandemia. This version, directed by Mimi O’Donnell and starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac, released all 10 episodes of its first season on October 25th, and it is wild and gripping stuff.
Isaac is already a veteran in the still-relatively-new world of podcasting: he appeared in the other suspenseful, sci-fi-ish Gilmet media pod, 2016′s Homecoming, and is executive producer and also narrator on new true crime podcast, The Rosenberg Case. He plays Peter Roiter, the presumably delusional patient of psychiatrist Eliza Beatrice Knight (Moore). Roiter claims to be a time traveller, insisting he has come from the year 2062 to save the world. From what, you may ask? Just total annihilation. NBD.
What unfolds is a series of encounters between the two, interviews really, where Roiter works to convince Knight that he has travelled from a future in which a pandemic threatens to wipe out the human race, and that she is necessary for his plan to save humanity. We the listeners, like Knight, are taken on a journey towards some ever elusive truth that builds in enough twists to really throw us off kilter, and enough unexplained inconsistencies to ensure we never fully shed our scepticism.
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The story unfolds in 10 short, tightly scripted bursts, varying in length from seven to 16 minutes. Supporting characters are given little airtime – Case 63 largely plays out between the two protagonists, as Roiter outlines a world 40 years in the future, and drops Quantum Theory here or there, as well as some grim (and troublingly plausible) news about what may await us.
It all makes for deft use of a storytelling format from the past to tell a story about the future that speaks to our fear-filled present
It might seem hard to credit that humanity-destroying pandemic stories can be sexy, but Isaac and Moore make that happen. Isaac in particular brings a languid sensuality to his performance, and the sexual tension is up there with the narrative tension as a driver to the end. That end, though – what a way to yank us by the ears out of our smug I-know-where-this-is-goingness. If you’re like me, it’ll have you starting the whole thing over on the spot – oddly doable, given that episodes one through 10 clock in at under two hours – to come at it all over again.
It all makes for deft use of a storytelling format from the past to tell a story about the future that speaks to our fear-filled present – in essence, Case 63 is a highly bingeable radio play. Everything points to a second and third season in the coming years, given that the original Caso 63 has released three seasons and this one is already topping charts all over. I for one will have my dial tuned.
