Geektown Radio - TV News, Interviews & UK TV Premiere Dates

Why can an adaptation reproduce the characters, costumes, lore and famous moments, yet still feel completely wrong? The problem may not be fidelity, but whether the people rebuilding the story understand what is holding it together.

Hollywood loves an established world.

The maps already exist. The characters have names. The famous scenes are waiting. The fans are already emotionally invested. On paper, adaptation should be the safest possible form of storytelling.

So why do some adaptations change enormous parts of their source and still feel completely right, while others reproduce the surface almost...

Streaming was supposed to free television.

No schedules. No missed episodes. No VHS tapes with the ending accidentally recorded over by Coronation Street. Just an endless library of stories waiting whenever you wanted them.

For a while, it felt like liberation.

But once television became something delivered through a pipe, the pipe became more valuable than the programmes moving through it. Netflix went from DVD-by-mail upstart to data-driven studio. Disney built its own digital fortress. Every media company wanted its own kingdom. And somewhere along the way, abundance became fragmentation, discovery became algorithmic...

This week, Dave chats with author David Crichton about his new novel, ‘The Avengers: Death in Downing Street’, which returns John Steed and Emma Peel to the wonderfully stylish and eccentric world of the classic 1960s television series.

And, just to avoid any confusion following the latest ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ trailer, we are talking bowler hats and leather catsuits here, not Marvel superheroes.

David and Dave also have a little history together, having worked at the same design agency in a previous life. They discuss David’s journey from account handler to published author, and how a lockdown...

Cosplay began as something gloriously handmade: fans turning up in costumes because they loved a story enough to carry it into the room.

But somewhere between the early science fiction masquerades, Star Wars armour builds, convention photo galleries, viral cosplay, professional creators and the rise of organisations like the 501st Legion, something shifted.

The costume was no longer just a costume.

It became proof that a franchise mattered.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave looks at how cosplay grew from fan-made performance into one of the most visible forms of franchise...

In this episode of Geektown Talks To, Dave chats with cinematographer, director and filmmaker Boris Mojsovski, whose work includes Netflix’s Harlan Coben thriller ‘I Will Find You’, along with ‘Rabbit Hole’, ‘12 Monkeys’, ‘Titans’, ‘The Lost Symbol’, ‘The Madness’ and more.

Boris talks about growing up around film sets, initially trying not to follow the family path into filmmaking, and how photography, writing and directing eventually pulled him back behind the camera. He also discusses the unusual position of being both a cinematographer and director on long-form television, and how that helps shape the visual identity of a series.

We then di...

This week on Geekstorians, we travel to Middle-earth, not as tourists, but as slightly suspicious historians with a map, a torch, and some concerns about licensing agreements.

In 1998, Peter Jackson walked into New Line Cinema with a fantasy epic most of Hollywood considered impossible. What followed became one of cinema’s great gambles: three films, shot back-to-back, built in New Zealand by artists, craftspeople, performers, technicians, and people who apparently did not believe sleep was legally required.

But this episode is not just about how The Lord of the Rings became a miracle.

It...

Anime did not cross into Western culture in one clean movement. It arrived in fragments, through edited TV dubs, bootleg tapes, playground obsessions, fansubs, late-night downloads, and eventually legal streaming platforms.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave picks up where Season One’s ‘The Anime Underground’ left off, following anime’s journey from cult import to global mainstream force.

We begin at the 2003 Academy Awards, where Spirited Away won Best Animated Feature without sanding itself down for Hollywood. From there, we rewind to the late 90s, when Dragon Ball Z exploded on Toonami and taught a genera...

Video games didn’t just become bigger than film, music and TV. They became places people went, watched, gathered, spent money, and built memories inside.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown looks at how gaming quietly became the largest entertainment industry on Earth, and why nobody really announced it.

The story begins in April 2020, when millions of people attended Travis Scott’s Astronomical concert inside Fortnite. To some, it looked like a clever pandemic workaround. But for players, this was not a sudden novelty. Fortnite had already become a venue, a stage, a soci...

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave looks at the strange five-year window when geek culture stopped being something fans used to find each other, and became something companies used to find them.

Beginning in 2007, the episode follows the moment geek identity moved from comic shops, conventions, video rental shelves and school computer labs into the mainstream marketplace. The iPhone made technology aspirational. Comic-Con became an industry stage. Iron Man and The Dark Knight helped turn superheroes into serious blockbuster business. The Big Bang Theory brought geek references into prime-time sitcom culture. And by 2012, “geek chic” had reached the...

Season Three of Geekstorians begins with the moment geek culture stopped knocking on the door and started owning the building.

In this episode, Dave looks at the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Marvel’s desperate rights situation and the gamble of Iron Man, to Kevin Feige’s phase-planned architecture, the genre trick that kept the films from feeling like a production line, and the extraordinary test of asking audiences to follow a talking raccoon and a sentient tree into space.

Then we follow the machine to its greatest achievement: Infinity War and Endgame. Two...

This week on Geekstorians, we bring Season 2 to a close with ‘Nothing Went To Plan’.

Across the season, we’ve looked at films that nearly vanished, companies that collapsed under their own weight, shows that survived cancellation, fandoms that refused to let go, and the strange ways failure can become an origin story.

In this shorter reflective finale, Dave steps back from the individual stories to ask what they all have in common. Why do so many geek culture landmarks seem to emerge from bad decisions, broken systems, institutional indifference, and accidents that really should have e...

It is a very special episode of Geektown Radio this week, as Dave celebrates Episode 500 with regular co-hosts Matt and Gray for The Great Geeky Hall Of Fame Pub Quiz!

Geektown Radio officially launched back on Tuesday, 20th January 2015, although Dave had already recorded 32 interview podcasts before the weekly show began. Since then, there have been hundreds of episodes, specials, Geektown Behind The Scenes, Geektown Talks To, the Webby-nominated Geekstorians podcast, lots of convention coverage, countless streaming service rebrands, and more cancellation trauma than is probably healthy.

To mark the milestone, Dave puts Matt and...

This week on Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown looks at three films that did not behave the way Hollywood expected.

‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ arrived as a box office failure before midnight audiences turned it into a ritual. ‘Blade Runner’ opened to confusion, studio interference and mixed reactions before becoming one of science fiction’s most debated landmarks. And ‘The Big Lebowski’ drifted into cinemas as a modest Coen Brothers oddity before fans turned The Dude into something far bigger, stranger, and, somehow, semi-spiritual.

This is not a story about films that were secretly massive hits all along...

Dave is joined by Matt for Geektown Radio Episode 499, with this week’s show led by chat about breakout horror film Obsession, the opening episodes of Spider-Noir, Russell T Davies drama Tip Toe, and spy series PONIES.

Matt kicks things off with Obsession, which he calls one of the best films of 2026, praising its slow-burn setup, sharp horror concept and one scene that completely floored him. He also dives into Spider-Noir, with Nicolas Cage leading the live-action series, and talks about why the black-and-white presentation feels like the right way to watch it. There is also chat ab...

This week on Geekstorians, we’re boldly going into one of the strangest survival stories in geek culture: Star Trek, the franchise that has been cancelled, revived, mismanaged, overextended, rebooted, and pushed through nearly every major shift in modern entertainment.

Born in 1966, cancelled in 1969, and kept alive by fans who refused to accept that decision, Star Trek became something far bigger than a struggling network sci-fi show. It became a constituency. A culture. A future people wanted to believe in.

Dave traces the franchise from NBC’s infamous letter-writing campaign and the death-slot third season, thro...

This week, Geektown Radio heads to MCM Comic Con London for a special episode recorded around one of the UK’s biggest pop culture events, which took over ExCeL London for a packed weekend of TV, film, games, anime, comics, cosplay, panels and general geeky mayhem.

Dave went down to the convention for the weekend, although sadly Darryl had to drop out after being struck down ill, leaving Dave to tackle the heat, the crowds, the press room, and as many panels as one person could physically manage!

In the episode, Dave chats about the MC...

This week on Geekstorians, we’re looking at the leak that punched a hole through Hollywood’s gates.

For years, Fox had Deadpool sitting in development limbo. Ryan Reynolds wanted to make the film properly. Director Tim Miller had test footage. The fans knew exactly what they wanted. The studio, however, remained unconvinced.

Then, in July 2014, fifty-two seconds of Deadpool test footage appeared online.

It wasn’t a trailer. It wasn’t part of a polished marketing campaign. It wasn’t even supposed to be public. But once the footage hit the internet, the reacti...

Dave is joined by Darryl on this week’s Geektown Radio as they chat through the latest TV, film and gaming news, along with the shows and games they’ve been watching recently.

Darryl kicks things off with a look at ‘High Potential’ Season 2, the crime procedural starring Kaitlin Olson, which continues to deliver those fun “clever outsider helps the police” vibes. He also reviews ‘Mistletoe Murders’, the surprisingly intriguing cosy crime series starring Sarah Drew, which is available in the UK on ITVX, along with Jackie Chan action thriller ‘The Shadow’s Edge’, and indie drama ‘The Bearded Girl’.

In Season 2 Episode 6 of Geekstorians, Dave digs into one of the strangest turnarounds in blockbuster history.

After Tim Burton redefined Batman for the big screen, Warner Bros. slowly pushed the franchise away from gothic weirdness and towards something brighter, louder, more commercial, and far more toy-friendly. The result was 1997’s Batman & Robin — a film so spectacularly misjudged it didn’t just flop, it effectively shut Batman down for years.

But that failure turned out to be the point.

This episode explores how the collapse of Batman & Robin gave Warner Bros. the one thing it did...

Dave is joined by Matt for Geektown Radio Episode 497, and this week’s show is led by chat about Sky thriller Prisoner, the return of Citadel for Season 2, Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again, and the annual US network bloodbath as renewals and cancellations roll in.

Matt kicks things off with social media reviews for Wonder Man Season 1 and Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, with the latter earning huge praise for its big swings, compelling storylines and excellent payoff. He also wraps up Invincible Season 4, which continues to deliver brutal action, strong character work and plenty of Viltrumite chaos.

In this Geektown Talks To interview, Dave chats with cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera, the lead cinematographer behind both seasons one and two of Marvel’s ‘Daredevil: Born Again’.

Hillary was there from the very beginning of the Disney+ series, shooting the pilot, finale, and seven of the nine episodes in season one, helping to establish the grounded, cinematic look of Matt Murdock’s return to Hell’s Kitchen. She also returned for season two, shooting half of the episodes, including the opening two, as the story pushed further into the conflict between Daredevil, Wilson Fisk, and a city under...

Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with the moment virtual worlds stopped being just games and started becoming laboratories.

In ‘Virtual Worlds, Real Consequences’, Dave looks at three very different digital worlds — World of Warcraft, EVE Online and Second Life — and the very real human behaviour they exposed once thousands of people were let loose inside them.

It starts with World of Warcraft’s Corrupted Blood incident, when a raid debuff escaped into the wider game and created a plague across major cities. What looked like a game bug became something stranger: an accidental model of how people beh...

Dave is joined by Matt for Geektown Radio Episode 496, and this week’s show is led by chat about the Kenyan romcom Boda Love, ambitious sci-fi film Project Hail Mary, the return of Criminal Record for a second season, and Dave getting pulled back into Starfield.

Matt kicks things off with Boda Love, a Kenyan romance that follows a British woman travelling to Africa after falling for someone online, only for things to go in a very different direction. He also reviews Project Hail Mary, praising its scale, ambition and sci-fi ideas, while also checking in on th...

Geektown Talks To is back, and in this episode, Dave sits down with actress Joséphine Jobert to discuss her new crime drama ‘Saint-Pierre’, which recently launched in the UK on U&Alibi.

UK viewers will know Joséphine from ‘Death in Paradise’, but in ‘Saint-Pierre’ she takes on a very different kind of island detective role as Deputy Chief Geneviève “Arch” Archambault. Set on the French territory of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland, the series follows Arch as she is partnered with Donny “Fitz” Fitzpatrick, played by Allan Hawco, after Fitz is sent to the island f...

Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with the corporate disaster that accidentally redrew modern pop culture.

In ‘The Fire Sale Blueprint’, Dave looks at how Marvel’s bankruptcy in the 1990s led to one of the strangest and most important chain reactions in film history. As the company collapsed under debt, many of its biggest characters were licensed or sold off in deals that looked sensible at the time and faintly insane in hindsight.

Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and others ended up in other studios’ hands. What Marvel was left with looked, at the time, like the second-s...

Dave is joined by Domingos for Geektown Radio Episode 495, and this week’s show is led by chat about Michael, the Canadian crime drama Saint Pierre, Apple TV alt-history spin-off Star City, and the return of A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder.

Domingos kicks things off with Michael, the new biopic charting the early life and rise of Michael Jackson, with Jaafar Jackson playing his famous uncle. He also revisits Netflix’s brilliant sports documentary The Last Dance, which charts Michael Jordan and the final run of the Chicago Bulls dynasty, and digs into A Good Girl’s...

Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with one of the strangest survival stories in geek culture.

In ‘The Wilderness Years’, Dave looks at what happened after Doctor Who disappeared from television in 1989. No big finale. No proper ending. Just a show the BBC quietly stopped making, and an audience that refused to accept that as the end of the story.

This episode follows the long years when Doctor Who survived off screen through novels, audio dramas, conventions, magazines and the sort of organised fan determination Britain tends to produce whenever an institution behaves like it has misplaced its...

Dave is joined by Matt for Geektown Radio Episode 494, and this week’s show is led by chat about horror film Undertone, relationship drama The Drama, Canadian crime series The Murder Line, and a return to Gilead in The Testaments.

Matt kicks things off with three film reviews. First up is Undertone, an audio-led horror built around a creepy podcast mystery, which nails a lot of its atmosphere and sound design before losing its footing a bit in the final stretch. Then there is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which Matt found colourful but paper thin, before fi...

Season 2 of Geekstorians continues with a story about collapse.

In ‘When Giants Fall’, Dave looks at three companies that once seemed unstoppable — Atari, Sega, and Blockbuster — and how each of them, in very different ways, lost their grip on the future.

From Atari’s collapse after the video game crash of the early 1980s, to Sega’s spectacular inability to get out of its own way during the console wars, to Blockbuster staring straight at the future and somehow deciding it probably wasn’t important, this is an episode about what happens when success turns into inertia.<...

Dave is joined by Darryl for Geektown Radio Episode 493, and this week’s show is led by chat about Swedish thriller Vaka, oddball sci-fi comedy The Miniature Wife, the return of The Boys, and why Daredevil: Born Again finally feels like it has found its footing.

Darryl kicks things off with Vaka, a Swedish mini-series on Prime Video built around an insomnia epidemic that spirals into chaos in Stockholm. He also finishes Furies Season 1 on Netflix, with Season 2 already out now, and checks in on Daredevil: Born Again, which now seems to be in a much stronger pl...

Season 2 of Geekstorians begins with one of the great near-disasters in modern geek history.

This episode tells the story of how Toy Story 2 nearly disappeared during production, not because of a studio fight or some dramatic Hollywood scandal, but because of a routine command, a failing backup system, and the sort of technical catastrophe that still makes creative people wince.

But this is not just a story about Pixar nearly losing a film.

It is also the perfect starting point for a season about how geek culture survives when everything goes wrong. The...

Dave is joined by Domingos for Geektown Radio Episode 492, and this week’s show is led by reviews of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Prime Video comedy Bait, Netflix horror series Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen, and thriller Pretty Lethal.

Domingos kicks things off with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the follow-up to the cult horror hit, which brings back Samara Weaving and adds Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood and Catherine Newton to the chaos. He also dives into Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen, a creepy, psychological Netflix limited se...

What do ‘Adventure’, the Konami Code, Pixar’s A113, hidden DVD extras, ‘The Beast’, ‘I Love Bees’ and Marvel post-credit scenes all have in common?

They are all part of the long, strange history of the Easter egg.

In this special Easter episode of ‘Geekstorians’, Dave digs into how hidden messages, secret rooms, buried jokes and coded nods evolved from acts of quiet rebellion into a full-blown language between creators and audiences.

The story begins with Warren Robinett’s famous hidden room in ‘Adventure’ on the Atari 2600, before moving through the rise of the Konami Code, Microso...

Dave is joined by Matt for Geektown Radio Episode 491, with this week’s show led by chat about The Pitt, horror film They Will Kill You, indie survival game The Last Caretaker, and the first trailer for the new Harry Potter TV series.

Matt also talks through his huge The Last of Us Part II chronological mode deep dive, plus the latest casting news for The Last of Us Season 3. There is also a review of Resident Evil: Requiem, which lands as a mixed but still worthwhile entry.

On Dave’s side, there is plenty to d...

Dave is joined by Darryl for Geektown Radio Episode 490, and this week’s show is led by reviews of War Machine, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, and the launch of Saturday Night Live UK, alongside a big chat about the new Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer.

On the review side, Darryl covers 96 Minutes, War Machine, Furies and Cross Season 2, while Dave dives into Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Saturday Night Live UK and Invincible Season 4. So there’s everything from military action and crime thrillers to sketch comedy, superheroes and Tommy Shelby stomping back into view.

Th...

Dave and Gray are back for Geektown Radio Episode 489 with a packed week of TV, film and entertainment news, including the Oscars 2026 winners, Firefly returning as an animated series, two lost Doctor Who episodes recovered, Buffy’s reboot stalling at Hulu, and Michael Sheen taking over House of Games.

They also review a pile of shows this week, including Young Sherlock, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, The Capture, Solar Opposites, Gone, The Secret Genius, Vanished, The Floor, Hijack, Down Cemetery Road, How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, Scrubs, Ted and 9-1-1: Nashville.

On the fi...

Young Sherlock, Outlander Season 8, Life Is Strange casting, and a very suspicious set of Firefly reunions lead the news in Geektown Radio Episode 488.

Dave and this week’s co-host run through what they’ve been watching recently, including horror chatter, social media film discoveries, and a chronological deep dive into The Last of Us Part II. Dave also checks in with Young Sherlock, the ITV drama Gone, the final season of Outlander, and the new game Aethus.

In the TV news this week:

• The Bear will end with Season 5

• ITV detective drama Ri...

This week on Geektown Radio, Dave is joined by Domingos for a packed episode covering returning favourites, intense new dramas, and a huge industry shake-up.

What We’ve Been Watching

Dave is joined this week by Darryl from Hollywood North News for a packed episode covering the February BAFTAs, a tribute to the late Eric Dane, fresh show impressions, a report from the London Anime & Gaming Con, and a full run of UK and US TV news.

Darryl brings early thoughts on Talamasca: The Secret Order, the new Netflix entry in the Anne Rice universe, and whether it works if you haven't seen the other shows. He's also been into Cross Season 2 on Prime Video and reports back on whether it lives up to the first. There...

Language doesn’t just describe culture.

Sometimes, it creates it.

In the Season One finale of Geekstorians, Dave explores the hidden history of geek language — how fans invented their own slang, references, in-jokes, and shorthand, and how that language quietly shaped modern geek culture and the internet itself.

From handwritten letters in the back pages of early science-fiction magazines, to fanzines, conventions, badges, and costumes… from Monty Python quotes and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to arcade slang, tabletop role-playing games, online gaming, text-message shorthand, memes, and chat rooms. This episode traces h...