Drunk Women Solving Crime

Drunk Women Solving Crime

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Hit podcast brings live show to Komedia

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It’s not much of a secret, but I’m a big fan of drinking. I’m even more enthusiastic about laughing at people’s bad decisions. So, the acclaimed podcast, Drunk Women Solving Crime ticks a lot of boxes. 

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The concept is simple, hosts Hannah George and Taylor Glenn invite some guests in, crack open a bottle of prosecco and delve into some of history’s most epic and elaborate criminal failures. And, like all brilliant ideas, it started with just the title.

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“It’s not the way you're supposed to do things,” Glenn tells me. “You're supposed to come up with a format first. But it was a great title, and it was sort of a question of, what could we do with this?” Both Glenn and George have stand-up and comedy writing backgrounds, so for a while toyed with the idea of turning the punchy moniker into a sketch show. But, while sat in the pub, they began to flesh out a format which delved into absurd, misguided and unfortunate cold cases and turned everything into a cross between a banter-laden chat-show and a pub quiz.

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“It fails miserably at both, to be honest,” George says with a laugh. “But that is part of the fun. We have a guest every week. They can be really silly or someone who takes it all very seriously, who wants to be right and gets quite competitive. They're equally fun.” Show guests have included Lucy Porter, Christopher Hall, Scroobius Pip, Sooz Kemper and Arabella Weir, each bringing their own insight to the unlikeliest of lawbreaking.

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Our cultural fascination with crime is booming, whether that’s with TV procedural dramas, chart-topping detective novels or the explosion in documentaries and podcasts exploring real-life criminality. There’s something strangely compelling about mysteries and murders. “As comedians, we're very conscious of what you're allowed to make fun of,” says Glenn. “We definitely want to punch in the right direction. Our approach is to either pick a crime from the 18^th or 19th century, so there’s that old adage of time plus tragedy equals comedy. Or if anything's more recent, it's going to be a non-violent crime.” Recently they did an episode around an unlikely group called the Pink Panthers, who pulled off some of the biggest jewellery heists in the past few decades. “It feels like we can tackle that sort of thing. We're not going to do recent murders where there are living victims. There's just no reason to touch that. There are enough other podcasts that are tackling those…”

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“A murder where there's living victims?” George breaks in. “That's not murder?”

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 “Is that what I said?” Glenn says with a sigh, which turns into a chuckle. “It’s too early, guys! Living victims… that’s good news then, isn't it?!”

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George agrees that it’s about choosing the right cases. “When our guests come on, they also tell us about a time they've been a victim of a crime. Invariably, they're women, as we allow four men on the podcast a year. We start from a point of almost vulnerability, where somebody says: ‘This is how I was a victim of a crime.’ We also have a listener crime, which is a nice way of getting the audience involved.”

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The pair have recently been taking the show on the road, and are set to bring their sleuthing skills to Brighton’s Komedia for a festive special on Mon 16 Dec. Here they’ll be recording two episodes. They say it’s brilliant to present their debut Brighton show at Christmas time, especially seeing as Glenn has lived in the city for a while now and loves the North Laine club.

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“It was always one of my favourite venues,” she declares. “No joke. Brighton audiences are just the best. They're like Londoners, but they've taken their antidepressants. Yeah, sea air. That's why the Victorians sent everybody to the seaside. There you go. It was the Prozac of its time.”

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“What's great about the podcast is that there's no way I would go back to stand up, but it gets to sort of scratch that performing itch. We get to do shows in front of people who know our shtick and already like us. That is just unlike any standup comedy gig so it's amazing.”

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The whole podcast industry is increasingly embracing the live arena. George says it often works so well because the audience share a strong commonality. “Hopefully our vibe is a little bit like being in the pub with your friends,” she says. “It makes us realise that these listeners that we see stacking up on the stats are real people.”

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Glenn suggests Drunk Women Solving Crime already has an air of unpredictability, which is amplified in a live environment. “We're truly improvising,” she says. “We're not pretending that the guests don’t know the details of the case. It’s thinking on your feet, and the audience get really excited about what's going to come out of their mouth. Which is fun.”

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But can true crime neatly fit into the season of goodwill to all? George seems to think so. “Our Christmas shows are always especially festive. I know that sounds weird, but they really are. I recently found a crime which is Christmas-based. I always try and find one, but they're sort of quite limited. We did a bank robbery where the robbers dressed as Santa.”

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At the live shows, they also invite an audience member up onstage to recount their own brush with illegal activity. “We had a woman in Edinburgh who was falsely accused… we hope… of a murder,” says Glenn. “Her parents gave her phone number to the police which I guess is what you're supposed to do, you know. It was just a misunderstanding. So, yeah, there’s some wild stuff.”

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George tells me that when they started, they both quickly realised that the format could transfer into a live show. “A lot of people that we have on are comedians,” she adds. “We did one with Jenny Eclair, and if anyone knows how to work a room, it's her. So that was fun. Sometimes I’ll also choose a case for a live show which has bigger twists. Hearing a whole room of people gasp is almost as much fun as them laughing.”

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While it might be called Drunk Women Solving Crime, the success of the podcast isn’t predicated on its participants getting rip-roaringly pissed. Which is probably a good thing. “The drinking is optional,” says Glenn. “We didn’t know this was going to go on for six years. So, it's not all about having to be hammered for this format to work. It's about the vibe you get when a group of women get together. We try to solve the world's problems, and we are convinced we are the best armchair detectives… if not real detectives.”

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“I do worry that I would step in if I was in that situation,” George says, with an agreeing nod. “If someone's said to call the police. I'd be like: ‘Guys… I'm here!’”

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“I'm a long-time podcaster!” shouts Glenn. “You're all in good hands!” 

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It leaves me wondering if the pair would be adept at investigating. If decades of Hart to Hart, Miss Marple and Murder She Wrote have taught us anything, it’s that the Police service is always happy to accept assistance from plucky amateurs. “It's funny because I've definitely started to see patterns in cases,” says Glenn. “Although, I'm always amazed at how I'm still surprised by the outcome of some things. It just shows you can't necessarily become an expert in this just by repetition.” She’s learned more about history by doing this podcast than she ever did at school. There's a geeky joy in what they do. “I love that, because we're so silly and not above really puerile dick jokes - which is what everybody loves... We talk about these cases, where I'm like: ‘Well, if you taught me this in school, I would have paid bloody attention.’ You know?” 

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George has written for several big children’s TV shows, while Glenn (who was born in Pittsburgh) worked as a psychotherapist for eight years. “That lends itself to some good detective work, I suppose,” she says. “Part of the fun is this contrast of me being American, and looking through that lens, and Hannah grew up on the Isle of Wight, so she’s obviously repressed.”

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If the podcast demonstrates anything, it’s that the world’s prisons are filled with stupid people. Some of the crimes it covers are characterised by mishaps and the inexplicable. “You do realise that you don’t have to be clever to be a criminal,” says George. “If anything, the people who think they're clever are often the most stupid. It's stunning how people think they can get away with stuff, when they really can't.”

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 “There's an arrogance to it that has seemingly been there for hundreds of years,” chips in Glenn. “We might do a case that's 300 years old, but not much has changed.”

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On the flipside of this, there are always the impressively complex crimes, which require elaborate planning. It does make you wonder why this type of villain doesn’t simply start a legitimate business. “There's lots of lots of people, particularly the con artists, who have obviously got something about them which makes people buy things from them,” says George. “Why not invent a type of spoon, or something?” 

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 “It is about time somebody updated the spoon,” agrees Glenn. “But it is true, there's so many people who should have just gone into business. Sometimes they've been born into the wrong time or place, so they can't. A lot of times, I'm just like: ‘You should have done a show at Edinburgh Fringe!’ Some of them just need attention. They need to be actors or comedians themselves.”

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 “That's the biggest crime of them all,” sighs George. 

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What the podcast has revealed is a salacious attitude towards crimes committed by women, despite there being fewer with significantly less violence involved. Perhaps it attracts so much interest and more speculation because it’s rare, or maybe it’s just double standards. “Statistically, it's more men that commit violent crime, says Glenn. “We did one show about a woman called Lady Bathory, who lived in what became Dracula's castle, or the inspiration for it.” There is academic suggestion she became the subject of a witch-hunt, something which led to her and her servants being accused of murdering hundreds of young women. This led to (very much unsubstantiated) speculation that she’d drank the blood of her victims. The noblewoman quickly became a mainstay of European folklore and even got a death metal band named after her.

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“What's interesting is that crimes across time, especially ones which are a little bit far fetched, have to be taken with a pinch of salt,” says George. “Particularly with women as well.”

“For all we know, she just asserted herself one day,” chips in Glenn. “But everyone is like: ‘She drank his blood!!!’ It depends on who's writing all this up and what lens they're looking through.”

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Over the last few years, they’ve had lots of laughs, drank a few cases of wine and, most importantly, researched a lot of wrongdoing. Do the pair think they could become successful criminal masterminds, or is the world of podcasting excitement enough? “I'm a pretty terrible liar, which I think is a nice trait,” ponders Glenn. “I go bright red.”

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 “I think I'd be like Robin Hood,” offers George. “Because I’m such a great gal! But I think it would worry me, being a criminal. I'd always have too much anxiety.”

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Broadly, there's two groups of people who go wrong, Glenn tells me. It’s either those who are so desperate they have to turn to crime, or sociopaths who just don't have the guilt factor. “I'm definitely not that. I'm proud to say, six years of this, I'm pretty sure I'm not a sociopath. Hannah, you might feel differently now that you've worked with me?”

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 “We were talking the other day about somebody who’d smuggled their mobile phone into prison,” says George. “Taylor was very much like: ‘It's to call his wife!’ And I'm like: ‘No, he doesn't.’ But I think what we do on the podcast is, if a woman has become a criminal, we're always assume she was properly pushed to it by a man,” she starts laughing. “Yeah, let that lady off! She’s fine!”

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After a sell-out 2024 residency, Drunk Women Solving Crime are back in 2025 for another London Residency live at The Museum of Comedy in Bloomsbury.

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www.komedia.co.uk 

www.drunkwomensolvingcrime.com 

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