Our movie podcast recommendation of the week has a pair of filmmakers chatting about the movies: here’s The Best Bits.
The majority of British movie podcasts we feature on Film Stories are hosted by enthusiastic amateurs; people with a passion for film, or filmmaking, but with no actual experience in the field. Sometimes genuine fans make the best critics and reviewers, but in the case of The Best Bits, hosted by Kevin Lehane and Will Collins, they meet the criteria of being huge film fans, but also have some serious filmmaking credentials to boot.
Here at Film Stories, we believe in credit where credit is due, so here’s some of the things Kevin and Will have achieved so far; Will is the screenwriter of Wolfwalkers and Song of the Sea, two terrific animated features from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, both of which were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. Kevin wrote the cult classic Irish monster movie Grabbers, and was nominated for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best First Feature.
Both Kevin and Will are, therefore, pretty talented guys, but their talents don’t stop there. During the height of the pandemic, around Christmas 2020, they decided to also start a podcast. The Best Bits does exactly what it suggests, it takes the best bits of movies, be it scenes, topics or tropes, and offers them up for Will and Kevin to discuss. Being both naturally creative, podcasting is a way to get their creative juices flowing in a different, yet satisfying way, and to put the fun back into what was a really weird time for everyone.
Kevin and Will are great friends, and they mostly just relish any opportunity to make each other laugh. That comes across in episodes, too. You can really tell they actually enjoy chatting to each other, and they have great hosting chemistry. They love talking about scenes that stir a range of emotions but do it in an accessible and informative way. That enthusiasm saturates each episode, making The Best Bits a very easily binge worthy podcast.
You can tell there’s a great deal of wit and intelligence behind The Best Bits, even artificial intelligence. Kevin created a podcast AI, called Podbot, as part of an episode on the Best Robot Scene. Podbot makes regular appearances and is almost a third co-host. Like all podcasts, there’s a lot of work involved in the general day-to-day tasks all podcasters have to do, but as with most things they do Will and Kevin go the extra mile. It’s the little things that stand out, such as their logo being different movie logo typefaces (have a look and see if you can guess them all!), and let’s be honest not every movie podcast creates their own AI. It’s clear that to Kevin and Will, listener experience is everything. They really care about making the best podcast they can – and they do!
Their new season has just started, and you can expect the same terrific mix of fun, facts and generally infectious joy, as well as episodes on Opening Scenes, Battle Scenes, Superhero Scenes and Made-for-TV Movies. Even the fact Will records his side of the episodes in a big pink room is endearing. You want to listen to these guys, and you want to carry on listening, and that’s the mark of an excellent podcast.
The best bits about The Best Bits? Is it wrong to say everything?
Recommended episode: Season 3 Episode 29 – Best Spoof Scene – (23 March 2022) – https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/best-spoof-scene/id1555161900?i=1000554920091
The Best Bits can be found at: https://linktr.ee/bestbitspod
And followed at:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bestbitspod
All episodes of The Best Bits are available and can be listened to or downloaded from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Are you a British movie podcast who would like to be featured on Film Stories? We welcome all suggestions and requests, but we especially want to hear from you if you’re female, BIPOC, non-binary, LGBTQIA+ or have a disability. Email Em – verbaldiorama at gmail co uk (Just remove the spaces and add the ‘@’ and the dots, but don’t send spam. She’s vegetarian.)
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