Knock twice for “no”
The Foxes Of Hydesville
Production company – Qcode
Rating – 
Seeing as Halloween is almost upon us, it would be remiss of me to not have another spooky podcast to review. This month seems to have been taken up with more earthly concerns so far. Well that, and the slew of advance episodes for release day reviews that I’ve been inundated with. Not any more though! To round October off I have my review of The Foxes Of Hydesville.
So what’s it about?
The Foxes Of Hydesville is a rather imaginative (and loose) retelling of the story of the Fox sisters. The siblings who literally kick started the spiritualism craze in 19th century America.
The story follows the abrasive, sarcastic and foul mouthed Leah Fox as she travels to rural New York State to investigate allegations of her sisters living in “The Spook House”. Leah and her friend Adelaide rescue her now notorious sisters Maggie and Kate and flee to the city.
Once there they gain even more notoriety, mostly due to Leah’s contacts, and Maggie and Kate’s strange ability to gain information about people from the dead.
Is it any good?
There are pros and cons with this series. The sound design is brilliant, and the more dramatic events in the first episode or two are very well done. As is the voice acting. There are no dodgy accents here, and no wooden acting either.
Nine episodes is probably the perfect length for any series, it’s enough space to develop the characters and storyline, but short enough not to pad things out and digress too much. As has been the case recently, I managed to get through the whole thing in a day.
Now for the cons.
I can see why this is so popular, but it fell somewhat flat for me. There is very little of the actual Fox sisters in this story. It seems like the whole story is an excuse for Leah Fox to swear at old men. Actually, it’s an excuse for Leah Fox to swear at anyone really.
While her choice of language and forthright attitude may be intended as “empowering”, she just comes across as a bit of a twat. I apologise for my turn of phrase, but I can’t think of any other way to say it that would do it justice (and I did try, I promise).
Final thoughts
I’m not sure what to make of this show really. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy podcast, and while the more dramatic supernatural events are certainly cinematic, they are not truly scary.
This series just seems like a missed opportunity. The story is written from the perspective of the sisters actually having mediumistic skills (despite deathbed confessions that it was all a hoax). I wonder why then, didn’t they either tell the story like that, as a straight spooky story, or play it knowing that it was all a con. Maybe it’s just me. I’m sure that Leah would have some rather robust assessment of my intelligence and parentage.
This series gets three brains because of the quality of the cast and the sound design. It would have been a two brain show otherwise.
It would have been nice to have devoted October solely to horror podcasts. Maybe I’ll clear my schedule next year and we’ll have four spooky reviews (or five, depending on how the Sundays land).
You can get Foxes Of Hydesville here: