We spoke with Koenig about the third season of the popular podcast. In the 14 hours after Season Three of Serial was released, the first two episodes were downloaded 3 million times, beating Seasons One and Two. The series illustrates that even a couple of days in an American jail can have a profound and traumatizing impact on a person’s life - and most people who get entangled in the criminal justice system fare a lot worse than a few days in jail. For example, while probation might seem like a more humane alternative to jail, in reality it can entrap defendants in a never-ending power struggle with the court - one they are doomed to lose, often after many onerous terms and pointless court-mandated trips to AA, for example. The series ably illustrates structural problems that bedevil the system, even when the intentions are mostly good. Koenig has a maddening exchange with Steve Loomis, the former head of the Cleveland police union, who refuses to budge from his position that shooting Rice was the right thing to do. There’s the top brass in the Cleveland police fighting reforms, even after a rookie cop shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice as he played in a park. He also tries to coerce a man into a guilty plea by threatening to stack multiple 14-year sentences. There’s the judge who threatens black defendants with jail time if they have more children and blithely throws around racist tropes about broken black families and drug use. Still, the stories that come out of the Cleveland courthouse can be shocking, made all the more unbelievable because you’re listening to people act, and then try to justify their actions, to Koenig. The result shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone who’s ever seen a statistic about how many people America imprisons and their general race and class makeup (black, brown and/or poor). Koenig and a few of her researchers and producers planted themselves in a Cleveland, Ohio, county courthouse, and observed justice - or injustice, after injustice after injustice - play out over more than a year. In the third season of Serial, Koenig tells the stories of the very flawed individuals and institutions that make up America’s criminal justice system. In the second season, Koenig and Snyder took on the bizarre case of Bowe Bergdahl, the army private who burst into the national consciousness when the Taliban traded him for Guantanamo prisoners Bergdahl was eventually tried for desertion and dishonorably discharged from his post. After the series aired, he succeeded in getting a retrial. Syed, her ex-boyfriend, was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years. Crime Story Media, LLC is repped by WME.The first season of Serial, the explosively popular podcast from host Sarah Koenig and co-creator Julie Snyder, told the story of Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee, the 18-year-old high school student murdered and left in the woods of Maryland. The SpringHill Company is repped by WME and Ziffren Brittenham. The United States of America.”Īmoo is repped by CAA and Curtis Brown in the UK. His other credits include the films “A Moving Image” and the upcoming Searchlight feature “Sting Like a Bee: Muhammed Ali vs. The semi-autobiographical film follows Femi, a British-Nigerian boy who moves from a foster family in a white rural community to live with his mother in inner-city London, and learns what it means to be a young Black man in London in the early 2000s. It unites three companies built by James and Carter: Uninterrupted, the athlete empowerment media and consumer product company, SpringHill Entertainment, the premium scripted and unscripted film and television production company and The Robot Company, the brand and culture consultancy.Īmoo previously wrote and directed the feature “The Last Tree,” which premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The SpringHill Company is a global consumer and entertainment brand. Syed’s case was the subject of the podcast’s first season. The premium cabler previously aired the docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed” in March 2019. Should the project go to series, it would not be the first time that “Serial” has been brought to HBO.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |