How to make (and not make) a podcast into a TV show

The more often podcasts get turned into TV shows, the more routes producers take to turn the auditory into the visual. Do you simply film a roundtable, like HBO has done with “2 Dope Queens” and “Pod Save America”? Do you take a great podcast about podcasting and turn it into the world’s worst show about the medium, as ABC did with Zach Braff’s “Alex, Inc.”? Do you mess with the visuals, as Amazon’s “Homecoming” did? Or do you just add some actors but keep everything the same, like “Dirty John” or Amazon’s “Lore”?

Jessica Williams co-hosts the podcast “2 Dope Queens” with Pheobe Robinson, and both also starred in a series of HBO specials based on their show. She can also be seen in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” later this year. (Photo: Mindy Tucker, HBO)

There’s no right way to turn a podcast into TV, but a host of wrong ones, and “John” is an example of an adaptation that goes slightly wrong without becoming a Braffian-level disaster. But with so many airing, and more to come, it’s a good time to look at what works and what really doesn’t. 

More than anything, TV creators need to appreciate what made the podcast tick, why audio makes it great and what visuals can add to that greatness. That’s why HBO just makes roundtable podcasts such as “Queens” and “Pod” essentially supersized versions of themselves. It’s why “Homecoming” was so good, because its camera direction was so prominent (if sometimes heavy handed) and interesting. And it helped  that “Homecoming” had what no podcast could ever dream of: a Julia Roberts performance. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon’s horror series “Lore” was doomed from the start. In audio form, the explanations behind real-life scary stories are enthralling, thanks to the vocal performance of Aaron Mahnke, who sounds like a friend telling you a spooky campfire tale. Our imagination always creates scarier visuals than CGI can, and the “Lore” TV series, even with Mahnke’s help, seems like a lame history lesson. It’s all information, no heart. 

Great podcasts don’t always lead to great shows, no matter their popularity on iTunes. ABC thought “Startup” was a great podcast because it was about podcasting, but it was great because it was deep and thought-provoking, with a sprinkling of inspiration. It was both a conversation and a narrative, something hard to capture on TV. It could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways, but somehow ABC found the worst outcome. “Startup” never, ever should have become a dorky sitcom starring Braff. 

The big problem with “John” is that it mirrors the podcast structure a bit too closely. Sure, its easy to guess that Bana’s John is a bad guy from the moment he’s introduced (even without calling him “Dirty” in the title), but Britton’s Debra finds out his misdeeds far too quickly. In a podcast, starting with the big reveal and then filling in the backstory afterward is a great strategy. But on the TV series, it feels like the third episode of an eight-part miniseries should be the finale. 

The podcast-to-TV train has clearly left the station. And like all book-to-TV adaptations, some are good and others are bad . But since both podcasting and podcast TV shows are still relatively new, there’s a real opportunity for Hollywood to learn from the format. Just because podcasts already come in episodic form doesn’t mean they’re easier to adapt than other source material. They need careful massaging to work in a different format, whether it’s changing the timeline or splurging on the director or just being more selective in which ones get made.

We should be judicious now, before Apple Keynotes becomes the latest fall CBS drama.