The Crime Agents — how many more podcast spin-offs can we take?

Times

02-07-2025

The News Agents — the popular news show for grumpy centrists hosted by Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall — has proved less adept at spawning spin-offs than its rivals at Gary Lineker's Goalhanger studios. Lineker's stable of The Rest Is … podcasts is packed with thoroughbreds. The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Entertainment and The Rest Is Football are among the UK's most listened to shows. Even though, of those titles, only The Rest Is History makes any sense as a colloquial phrase. 'And well, the rest is politics!' 'Well you know what they say, the rest is entertainment!' Nobody actually says those things.
Arguably, 'The X Agents' format, produced by Global Media, makes equally little sense, but for some irrational reason it grates on me less. I even quite liked the last News Agents spin-off, The Sports Agents, but it hasn't achieved the chart dominance you suspect its Goalhanger equivalent (The Rest Is Sport?) would have.
The latest News Agents show, The Crime Agents (which does work as a title, somehow), is a good, sellable idea on paper — crime and news are hot podcasting topics — but on the basis of this first episode I doubt it will stand up in court for listeners. Our hosts are LBC's crime correspondent Andy Hughes and the former head of UK counterterrorism policing Neil Basu. Both men obviously know their stuff, but they struggle to achieve the easy conversational style that is the main requirement of a successful podcast.
We begin with Hughes announcing with some awkward formality that he has 'collated' some crime data and that 'we can reveal on this podcast that up to 540 convicted terrorists have been released and are on our streets'. It's a nice (although obviously terrifying) idea and a good way of generating publicity for the new show, but as Hughes reads out his statistics it's more like listening to a press briefing than a podcast.
'What comes to your mind when you hear those figures?' Hughes rather stagily demands of Basu. He's hardly going to say, 'Well I think it's bloody marvellous news, Andy. The more terrorists the merrier.' A more conversational, 'Shocking isn't it?' might have nudged the show on a little more convincingly.
Both men are a little wordy. Hughes, perhaps, is used to filling airtime on live radio. Basu, I suspect, has spent too long on the other side of the microphone. He comes over as formal and cautious, littering his speeches with apologies to the families of victims and statements of regret over terrorist incidents as if a wrong step will prompt furious listeners to start emailing complaints. Indeed, the effect is often remarkably like listening to a senior police officer being interviewed on Today. Podcasts only work if the hosts assume enough good faith on the part of their listeners to be able to relax.
There are some interesting insights. Apparently, half of the terrorists who have been so unnervingly unleashed on our streets have refused deradicalisation programmes and Hughes speculates that prisoners may be 'showing off by not taking part in these programmes'. It's slightly alarming to learn that deradicalisation is an optional module, like doing an A-level in general studies or further maths. But Basu says that terrorists have to want to be deradicalised for these programmes to work. 'Terrorism for me is like addiction,' he says. 'You do not cure yourself from alcohol or drug addiction unless you want to be cured from it.' Does being set in your views (however mad and violent they are) make you an addict? Sounds odd to me. But I suppose he would know. He is the former head of counterterrorism policing after all.
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It's early days. Perhaps this show will find its groove. Many successful podcasts have started more awkwardly than this one. But every clumsy new show I listen to puts me slightly more in awe of the ruthless effectiveness of Lineker's hit factory. The Rest Is Crime anyone?★★☆☆☆
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