Earlier this year, YouTube revealed a staggering fact: over 1 billion people now watch podcasts on its platform each month. At the time, this felt like one more nail in the coffin for traditional media. Following a presidential election where Donald Trump found success by skipping the traditional 60 Minutes interview in favor of rambling conversations with Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and (checks notes) legendary professional wrestler Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway, it’s clear that podcasts have never been more popular or more influential. However, the surging popularity of podcasts that you watch may still come as a surprise to many — but not to Duncan Trussel.
Five years ago, back when the phrase “podcasts on YouTube” was still an oxymoron, the actor-comedian-podcaster brought his freewheeling conversational style to Netflix. The result was Midnight Gospel, which took edited versions of Trussel’s podcasts and combined them with trippy animation guided by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward. Midnight Gospel was endlessly creative and surprisingly emotional. It was also ahead of its time. Netflix canceled the series after just one season, but on the anniversary of its April 20 debut, it’s worth taking a look back at this weird little cartoon that predicted our modern media moment.
Each of Midnight Gospel’s six episodes takes one of Trussell’s podcast conversations and pairs it with a unique visual adventure. For example, the first episode is a discussion with Dr. Drew about the pros and cons of drug use, which plays out during a zombie apocalypse. It sounds absurd, but with a bit of light editing and a few added lines of dialogue, this works surprisingly well. Episode 2 features a conversation with award-winning author Anne Lamott about the meaning of death, against the backdrop of an industrial meat factory and a civil war between alien bugs and robot spider clowns. (Again: It’s weird, but trust me, it works.)
In the show’s final and most moving episode, Trussell shares a conversation he recorded with his mother. I won’t say anything else about that episode here. It’s worth experiencing it for yourself.
If you’re wondering how any of this adds up to a TV show, the answer is that it kind of doesn’t. Each episode begins with Clancy (Trussell), a “spacecaster” living on the “Chromatic Ribbon” (the details of what this means are vague, but he’s definitely not on Earth). Clancy uses a futuristic computer to simulate an entire multiverse of habitable planets, and then visits a new one each episode in search of interview subjects for his spacecast. If that sounds like a contrived framing device, well, it is. Then again, considering that we only spend a few minutes per episode on the Chromatic Ribbon before getting to the good stuff, it gets the job done.
Ultimately, what makes Midnight Gospel so great isn’t just the profound conversations or the trippy animation, it’s how these two combine to create something totally new and unimaginable. Experiencing the show can sometimes feel like trying to have two conversations at once (you might get distracted by a weird little animated critter and miss a crucial quote about the meaning of life, or vice versa), but in the moments where the two come together, it can feel transcendent in a way few other pieces of art ever do.
Even five years later, when hours-long videos of dudes talking in their basements have somehow become one of the most popular forms of entertainment, Midnight Gospel is still ahead of its time. Once you’ve watched a few episodes, you may have trouble going back to The Joe Rogan Experience, or whatever your podcast of choice may be.
Unfortunately, Netflix has made it clear that there are no plans to produce more episodes (how we even got eight in the first place is still a mystery). But, in the meantime, you can always listen to Trussell’s podcast, which is still going strong. You’ll just have to imagine the psychedelic visuals on your own.
