The world of podcasts is an ever-expanding and exploding medium. It is a unique form of storytelling, bringing a visual world into your mind by using solely auditory description and sound effects as your tools. Taking inspiration from the radio plays of old, there are also a growing number of podcasts that are telling narrative stories. Many of them are making the leap from your earbuds to the small screen as they take on new life as television shows.

No recent television show has done that quite as well as the new Netflix series Archive 81. A few years ago, I would have said that show was Homecoming — though after its aimless and unnecessary second season there was room for a new work to take the top spot. That is where the new horror series from producer James Wan comes in, ready to build on the existing setup and take it in some bold new directions. It all comes together to make it one of the most quietly interesting new shows out there, especially when you see how it makes it all come to life from its podcast origins.

The series follows Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie), a talented modern-day archivist who is very good at restoring old tapes and video footage. He is so good that he is offered an absurdly high-paying gig to restore tapes from an old Ph.D. dissertation from 1994. The dissertation was being done by ​​Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi) on an apartment building called the Visser that burned down and left most of her footage badly damaged. Dan will have to meticulously restore and catalog all the footage, though the job is shrouded in mystery. To do it, he is told that he must go to a secluded location that is devoid of any connection to the outside world.

Over the ensuing eight episodes, Dan unravels the secrets of what happened at the Visser all those years ago. Alongside that, Melody conducts a series of interviews in her own timeline with residents at the building that Dan then watches. As the two timelines begin to blur and history starts to repeat itself, you are completely drawn into the world. The performances are all committed, capturing the emotional depth required to give you an engaging reference point amidst all the twists and turns. You truly begin to care for the characters who get swept up in the sinister events found therein.

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Image via Netflix

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While these elements are all worth praising and ensure the show is a compelling one, they easily could have gotten lost in the process of a lackluster adaptation. Thankfully, this work is anything but lackluster. It has a story that you can feel was based on a podcast, with the various archival interviews providing the foundation, though it more than expands the story behind the medium that it is drawing from. It is that aspect that is key to making an adaptation that is worth watching. You must be willing to take chances by making necessary changes, both in form and narrative, to carve out your own path.

Archive 81 is one of the more recent shows that do this successfully. What sets it apart is how it makes that shift from a podcast to a television show look so easy, despite many series before it falling flat when they have tried. Be it the 2019 series Limetown, which was subsequently canceled, or the admirable attempt in Apple TV+'s recent The Shrink Next Door, there are far too many that simply try to coast off their existing material. While not total disasters, they didn’t attempt anything that would make the most use of the visual medium of television. There are many scenes in Archive 81 structured around conversations between two people sitting together, but it is anything but static. The direction and aesthetic of the Netflix show are consistently unnerving in addition to being visually arresting. The result is one that is as engaging to follow along with as it is frighteningly dynamic to look at.

This is not a small feat either. It can be a tricky undertaking to take something that was originally built around listening and ensure it is able to seamlessly transition to the small screen. It isn’t just rewriting the dialogue or having characters reference things you can see. It is about storyboarding and planning out your shots. This is the meat and potatoes of structuring a scene, an element that too many productions can skimp on in the hope that the dialogue can just carry you through otherwise unremarkable visuals. Archive 81 blends both of these crucial aspects, making the strong story come alive with each passing moment.

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Image via Netflix

Even as it is built itself around the taped interviews being rediscovered and then listened to, every scene feels so precise. Seeing Dan gently clean the tapes and reconstruct them creates a tranquil rhythm, a soothing misdirect considering the horrors he will soon find when he views them. As it launches into increasingly nightmarish scenes from the past, Archive 81 brings you into the world as only a well-constructed narrative like this could. It is the combination of the dread-inducing sounds and the unsettling visuals that make the show something all its own.

This all ensures Archive 81 avoids the pitfalls of being too confined to its origin while still maintaining the mystery noir elements that frighten at every turn. It provides the best example of how such an adaptation can happen, offering a glimpse of what the impending rise of future projects taken from podcasts can and should look like. Whether or not this particular show gets a second season, as its ending is clearly setting up for, it has set a high bar for what we can hope for with anything that comes after. By growing beyond its roots, Archive 81 flourishes into something new and inventive that captures the eye just as it does the ear. One can only hope other creators take notice of all it did right and make sure they similarly embrace the technical attention to detail needed to make a show like this thrive.