The End #25: Restart & Blackwood + 5 recent conclusions & 2 new seasons of audio fiction coming soon! 🎧☺️

Greetings, fabulous fan of fiction podcasts!

I think I’m finally happy with the companion podcast to this newsletter, The End Last Week, This Week, And Next Week, so I encourage you to shove it in your podcatcher of choice right now!

I made a few tweaks to the section names to reduce confusion on what the words “complete” and “finished” mean, but the content is the same.

As always, your support at a personal level is much appreciated to keep this labor or love of mine going. So if you dig it, consider supporting The End. It’s cheap!

I have a not-a-surprise birthday party to plan for my wife tomorrow, so let’s get started.

Featured Audio Fiction

These are my personal recommendations for great-sounding audio fiction. As with all things in life, YMMV.

Restart — Dramatized thriller from BBC Sounds

They claim to cure video game addiction — but what’s really going on?

Restart is a mind-bending thriller from the makers of The Cipher, starring Armin Karima (Sex Education).

• Series complete as of 5 Oct 2022
• 8 episodes
• Listening time: 4h 42m
• 🎮🚔🫢

Blackwood — Dramatized horror from Skylark | Wondery

Five years ago, Molly Weaver, Bryan Anderson, and Nathan Howell started a podcast focused on the local legend of a monster called The Blackwood Bugman. Quickly, the investigation grows out of their control, as they discover that, not only are the legends seemingly true, many people in Blackwood have turned up dead or disappeared without a trace. Worse, there may be a reason why no one has ever uncovered the truth before. Someone is watching them, willing to do whatever it takes to keep the secret. Their recordings have finally been released.

Directed by Mark Freiburger. Produced by April Lamb. Written by Will Rogers.

• Series complete as of 21 Nov 2018
• 6 episodes
• Listening time: 2h 34m
• 👹🎙️🕵️

Season Finales & Finished Series

The following shows recently reached their season finale or wrapped the entire series. Some are on the longer side, and one is quite short, as you’ll notice.

The Night Post — Dramatized horror from Station 103

In Gilt City, conscripted couriers are both respected and shunned. They inhabit the borderlands between a growing industrial society and the untamed, arcane frontier that surrounds it.

• Season 3 finale released 22 Feb 2023
• 45 episodes
• Listening time: 15h 53m
• Season 4 starts Aug 2023
• 👻💌🌆

Morbid Forest — Narrated horror from Shawn Moreau and Naomi Richards

Let Ranger Harper guide you down a path through the woods as she spins you tales that will truly terrify. So don’t go down the wrong path, least you find yourself lost within the Morbid Forest.

• Season 3 finale released 21 Feb 2023
• 41 episodes
• Listening time: 18h 21m
• Season x starts Sept 2023
• 💀🌲🕷️

Two Flat Earthers Kidnap a Freemason — Dramatized comedy thriller from Jeremy Ellett | Realm

Conspiracy-loving Flat Earthers Randy Dunning and Gayle Kruger will do anything to make the next great viral video. They’ll even kidnap a Freemason and keep him locked in their basement until he tells them what the Freemasons are really doing behind those closed doors.

• Series complete as of 11 Feb 2023
• 17 episodes
• Listening time: 10h 32m
• 🦉🌏🧵

Parkdale Haunt — Dramatized horror from Alex Nursall and Emily Kellogg

As Claire gets closer to a secret at the heart of the old house in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale, she is also getting closer to losing herself. After Claire goes missing, Judith vies to track her down, even if it means diving into a history that may have been better left untouched.

• Series complete as of 23 Dec 2022
• 3 seasons, 30 episodes
• Listening time: 18h 13m
• 👻🏡❤️‍🩹

Savage Waking: Obliteration — Dramatized horror mystery from Invictum Digital

Trapped in the local library by forces they don’t understand, will a sherrif and a small group of civilians be able to decipher the mystery of what’s happening and escape the clutches of the dead? Or will the library become their tomb?

• Story complete as of 12 Sep 2022
• 1 episode
• Listening time: 0h 47m
• More seasons coming soon
• ☣️🧟😱

New Seasons Coming Soon

Presented by Radio Drama Revival, one of the internet’s longest-running anthology audio drama shows, with the goal of showcasing the diversity and vitality of modern audio fiction.

Returning on 1 Mar 2023

Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery from HartLife NFP, returns for Season 5.

• 48 current episodes
• Listening time: 26h 00m
• 🏚️⛰️🔭

Returning on 5 Mar 2023

Folxlore, a narrated horror series from In The Works x Tin Can Audio, returns for Season 2.

• 14 current episodes
• Listening time: 3h 37m
• �🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿😱

And that’s the end of The End this week! As always, check out TheEnd.fyi to see all the prior issues. And if you know a audio fiction person who should have their show featured in our weekly newsletter, send them to the site and ask the to fill out the dead-simple form.