It was so popular last year that we decided to do it again! Join us this holiday season as we introduce you to twelve of our favourite podcasts in the 12 Days of Podmas!
Zero Hours is a seven part fictional anthology podcast, from Long Story Short Productions, that premiered in October of this year. Each episode deals with the end of the world; not so much as a cataclysmic event but rather a situation that causes the person or persons trapped within to feel as though the world is ending. A personal apocalypse, so to speak. The episodes are set across seven centuries, beginning in 1722 and ending in 2316, with a time jump of ninety-nine years separating each one. Although none of the first six seem to be directly connected, the seventh pulls them all together in an unexpected way.
Despite the grandiose subject matter, each episode is not overladen with plot and mostly takes place as a conversation between two people. There are no in depth explanations of the background to the setting, it is just not needed, all that remains is an intimate fly on the wall feeling as the events unfold. Some of the conversations will make you laugh out loud, some will make you feel very uncomfortable, but all of them will likely haunt you long after they reach their conclusion. Each episode also comes with its own warning for the listener, most simply due to the swearing, but some due to the darker and scarier content. Witchcraft, body horror, human experimentation and online hatred are all a part of Zero Hours’ make up.
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The production quality is extremely high, all of the sound effects used are from the public domain, and you feel as though you are present in every scene. The writers – Gabriel Urbina, Sarah Shachat, and Zach Valenti – should be praised for their creation of a wholly believable chain of events and the world in which they are set. Some of the topics covered are pure science-fiction but you could easily see how our world could develop in the same way. Zero Hours is a self contained story but it would be wonderful, without giving away any spoilers, to see a second season based on how things went the next time around.