When the duo moved to Sony in 2022 – with what was essentially the same programme, but retitled Kermode and Mayo’s Take – their relaunch episode was the most popular subscription ever on Apple podcasts.
What is it about these two – both fine broadcasters in their own right, of course – discussing movies that elevates them to the perfect, format-defining listen? After all, there is nothing inherently box office about film reviews. Barry Norman was an equally fine critic, but for the most part his Film TV programmes aired late at night, only to the hardcore cinema fans who made an appointment to watch it.
No other film review show has an entire stand-alone wiki dedicated to it, something usually more associated with massive intellectual property like Marvel or Transformers.
You don’t have to listen to all that much of an episode to get some of it. Ahead of writing this I listened back to that very first download from 2005 (the BBC, as Mayo disclosed in the latest edition of the show, were reluctant to call it a “podcast” as they feared it was advertising Apple’s iPod; to this day, they refer to Apple products as “fruit-related devices”) and many of the key ingredients were well-established even then. Mayo tees up the excitement; listeners contribute their own intelligent and witty reviews; and then Kermode unleashes hell, in this case on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith: “A bad television soap opera, except completely overrun by mad computer graphics.”
Mayo’s interviews with the people who craft the films are always excellent, and given he is a fiction writer himself he is outstanding when talking to screenwriters, such as in the most recent episode’s discussion with The Last Of Us’ showrunner Craig Mazin. But he was a broadcaster on news radio station 5live for two decades – he was on air during 9/11 – and the ability he honed to ask a probing question can take a bog-standard press junket in a surprising direction. Naomi Watts once walked out when Mayo interviewed her about the Diana film, and the silence she left said far more about her real feelings towards the disastrous project than anything she could ever have uttered on air.
When the podcast first started, people used to write in, anticipating audio gold as he tore apart something that had irritated him. In 2007, when he reviewed Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End (“never was a film more accurately named”) he spoke for 11 minutes without interruption. It was extraordinary broadcasting; like an angry Alan Bennett unleashing a bonus episode of Talking Heads in real time.
He is especially thrilled by films with ideas – his highest praise is for something with “a brain in its head” – and his true gift is his ability to explain exactly why he connected with it in a way that makes the listener excited to see it too, without giving away any spoilers.
Incidentally, the singing was hilarious – which reminds me to mention that the show is very, very funny. It makes exceptional use of recurring jokes without alienating the new listener. They make regular use of a Minions fart gun. They take particular joy in deliberately mangling the French language: for example, you can guarantee Richard Linklater’s new film Nouvelle Vague, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle, will be translated as The New Vagueness, about the making of We’re All Out Of Souffle)
But the listener, represented by a stack of emails Mayo reads out, are the unseen heart of the show. In this post-religion, post-Covid world, where we can feel more disconnected from each other in our algorithmically-controlled lives, films are the last great communal experience. You cannot, after all, tailor the movie to make what happens fit your point of view – influencer or influenced, you watch the same thing.
People with mental health difficulties or neurodivergent conditions – and I speak as one – often see things in the movies the hosts have missed, and this is championed. One recent emailer talked about how they had really connected with Thunderbolts* as they had experienced male loneliness in exactly the way the film depicted it. It is this wide, diverse audience, sharing their differing views on the same subject matter, that is so enriching about.
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Most heartbreakingly was the story of Kip Freshwater, a small boy who had leukaemia and whose dad would talk about how they bonded over children’s films in between bouts of treatment, after which they would shout things like “smelly pants wee” into underpasses to relieve the stress. The story ended devastatingly, but Kip’s father still emails in and relates the ways new films help him deal with his grief.
And oddly, at their best these shows are not really about films. They’re about connection – between the two of them, between them and their listeners, and between us and the films they review. If you’re still yet to listen, I suggest you do so right now. Give it your best self, and see what it gives back to you.
You can listen to all episodes of Kermode and Mayo’s Take here
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