The 15 best comedy podcasts

This global sensation British podcast is one of those shows with a premise so bizarre you could never make it up in a million years. Co-host Jamie Morton’s dad literally wrote a porno, or at least, a series of erotic novels called ‘Belinda Blinked’. Each season of ‘My Dad Wrote a Porno’ sees Morton read through one of said books, a chapter per episode, with commentary from his mates James Cooper and Alice Levine. It is incredibly funny but also extremely good-natured, with later series livened by the trio’s many celebrity fans.

Running since 2009 – basically prehistoric times in podcast terms – veteran US comic Marc Maron started ‘WTF?’ after his old radio show got cancelled, illicitly recording the first few episodes in his former employer’s studios. Those days are long, long gone: the weekly ‘WTF’ is a huge success, worth it for the massive names alone – Barack Obama has been a guest, and he’s not exactly an outlier. But each episode is united by Maron’s endearingly slackerish approach and general aversion to such affectations as advance preparation.

Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas’s extremely long-running podcast has been powering ahead since 2010 and shows no signs of slowing down. Each week the trio watch and dissect a new bad movie, make jokes about it, attempt to make sense of the plot, and – by way of nominal balance – air the writings of Amazon reviewers who’ve given the film in question full marks. It’s a cosy format, but they do it brilliantly and have a seemingly limitless supply of material.

If you just want your podcast hosts stupidly famous, do check out this thoroughly entertaining affair from big names Jason Bateman, Will Arnott and Sean Hayes (‘Arrested Development’, ‘Bojack Horseman’, ‘Will & Grace’ etcetera). It revolves around a slightly tenuous conceit: each week, one of the three springs a surprise mystery guest on the other two, who must then interview the guest. Whether this matters or is just an excuse for the busy trio to avoid prep doesn't really matter, the shows are extremely entertaining, with massive guest stars and usually entirely undaunted hosts.

Comic Natalie Palamides and writer Carrie Poppy’s Disney-themed podcast is sporadic, to say the least: you’d have to go back to 2018 to get to a year where they managed more than two episodes. But the pair’s alternately endearing and slightly psychotic probes into Disney arcana and the world of its theme parks stack up into an impressive body of work, equal parts outlandish and wholesome. The knowledge they probably will spring another episode at some random point is part of the charm.

Married couple Alicia and Stacie’s ‘good podcast about bad relationships’ is not exactly a model of polite restraint, but it is enormous fun as they talk us – often somewhat saltily – through the doomed romantic histories of a variety of figures. The best thing about it is that it’s not just celebrity tittle-tattle: the two take a sweeping view of history and are as happy dissecting the colourful love life of Ivan the Terrible as they are Leonardo DiCaprio’s myriad of conquests.

This extremely funny two-season effort from The Onion is the perfect satire of the true-crime podcast: low-hanging fruit, maybe, but ‘A Very Fatal Murder’ does its job magnificently. It follows intrepid, repetition-prone reporter David Pascall as he uses a computer programme to track down a ‘culturally relevant’ murder for him to throw new light on – that is to say, the death of a hot white girl. It sends up the many foibles and ethical lapses of the true-crime boom whilst also serving as a fond tribute.

This long-running podcast from the question-setters of beloved Brit quiz show ‘QI’ involves the somewhat revolving cast of presenters each bringing an improbable fact to the recording, which they will share and discuss together. The vibe is quirky and silly rather than improving – much of the information is almost aggressively useless, which just makes it funnier. And yes: no room to get into it here, but there is indeed an argument that says there’s no such thing as a fish.

This podcast is based on a simple but pretty much inexhaustible premise: each week, brother and sister duo Alex and Christine Schiefer offer absurdly dramatic readings of one-star customer reviews of businesses from across the US. It’s an intrinsically funny idea, and the duo keeps it fresh via themed episodes, setting each other challenges to find extremely specific types of negative reviews, and the sheer joy of their incredulous laughter as they read the often deeply bizarre complaints.

Cult British comic Richard Herring has, on the quiet, reinvented himself as one of the great celebrity interviewers of the modern age, with his intentionally rude, somewhat embittered questions frequently extracting absolutely golden answers from guests used to altogether cosier sets of queries. The guests lean towards British and Britain-based stand-ups, but he bags the odd huge name and revelations from his show frequently make the news.

British comic Bob Mortimer and writer Andy Dawson’s long-running podcast started out life as a gently surreal take on the world of football. These days, football is a vague theme at best, and although guests from the world of sport are frequent, ‘Athletico Mince’ is more like a freeform series of sketches and shaggy dog stories. It takes a bit of attuning to but is marvellously eccentric and full of memorable comic characters.

Each week, hosts and ‘comedy queers’ Caitlin Powell and Kate Butch look back on the films and TV shows of their (British) childhoods and ask: did this show make them queer? The answer, naturally, is that no, ‘Sooty’ or ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ are not directly responsible for influencing their sexualities as adults. But their dissections of the foibles and, yes, the queerness of kids’ TV is glorious stuff. 

This magnificently entertaining show – aka ‘the only podcast hosted by women’ – is an elaborate and entertaining parody that sees ‘journalists’ Jennifer Hudson and Lilian Bayliss (in actual fact comic Katy Brand and actor Katherine Parkinson) team up to self-importantly discuss the issues that matter to women like them, such as why men don’t hold the door open anymore, or whether it’s okay to live up a tree.

Brit comic Adam Buxton’s podcast is notable for the resolutely gentle line of questioning he takes with his guests – something that has clearly encouraged a wide range of celebrities you rarely get on any other bit of the interview circuit to come to him. Everyone from Michaela Coel to Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead and Kazuo Ishiguro has been persuaded to let their hair down and come on the show.

If you were around in the ‘00s, you probably watched the knockabout medical sitcom ‘Scrubs’ at some point. If you were any sort of fan, then the odds are you’ll find something to enjoy this somewhat niche but extremely likeable podcast from the show’s stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison. In it, they and a guest really do discuss a ‘Scrubs’ episode per week, but the results are usually agreeably anarchic and off-piste.