Is this thing still on? We’re coming in live from our affiliate stations across the world! We’re covering International TV this season with the help of newly installed satellite tv dish. Specifically, we’re focusing on non-English television regardless of narrative genre! We’re starting with Los Espookys, the Spanish language, Latin-American set, HBO produced comedy series about a group of friends who build elaborate special effect horror as a small business. It’s Lesley’s opening staff pick...

We did our time, listener! 13 long episodes in crime tv. You can’t make us go back in there! It’s time to wrap up our crime season, and we could think of only one show to throw the book at us. Lesley and Ben cover The Wire, the lauded HBO prestige police procedural starring Lance Reddick, Idris Elba and Dominic West. We started with the season two finale, Any Port in a Storm and were stunned by the quality of the story so far. Was everyone else right? Was The Wire always this good?Plus we...

Lesley and Ben are trying something new. At Lesley’s suggestion, we’re watching Death and Other Details, the brand new murder mystery drama from Hulu, starring Violett Beane and Mandy Patinkin. Death and Other Details has a compelling plot, but is otherwise tripped up by some visual issues that got under Ben and Lesley’s skin. We’re excited to see how this mystery concludes, we just wish we could see more of the show! Plus, a lengthy discussion about crime as a genre, the lasting prevalence...

Lesley and Ben are now on an international crime spree. We’re tackling Lupin, the Netflix produced French thriller series about the adventures of Assane Diop, a man who has modeled himself after pulp character Arsene Lupin, the Gentleman Thief. We talk about Sherlock Holmes, pulp fiction of the early 1900s, foreign television, expanding our cultural horizons and how to execute a good plot twist. Also we talk a lot about France. Sacre bleu! Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly...

Syndicated is hitting the open road and solving murders across America with Poker Face, the Rian Johnson helmed and Natasha Lyonne starring mystery anthology show. We had to cover Poker Face after tackling Columbo and Murder She Wrote. Lesley and Ben fell in love with the 1970s retro Americana aesthetic, the cast of complicated characters and the BBQ being grilled in the third episode of the show. We talk alibis, Star Wars, Okja, cinematic murders. and the use of star power in...

Cabot Cove has no shortage of murders and there is no one more qualified to solve them than mystery writer Jessica Fletcher. Editor Jay Gagnon brings us Murder She Wrote, the number one source of Angela Lansbury material. Lesley, Ben and Jay stumble through a charming double murder in the high stakes cutthroat world of fiction publishing. Logically, we picked an episode that guest stars Better Call Saul’s Michael McKean. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly podcast about...

For every crime, there’s a mystery. A series of clues that lead back to the grisly, heinous answer. But Lesley and Ben stumbled on a mystery neither Jessica Fletcher nor Columbo could possible solve: what did people like about Dexter in 2006? Lesley and Ben are unimpressed with the Showtime show’s writing and narrative pacing and aren’t holding back about why. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly podcast about television, genre and storytelling in which your hosts watch one...

Chip Chip Cheerio. Top of the Morning. Other Such Phrases. Lesley and Ben are trying something different with this episode of Syndicated. Instead of having a guest, or showing each other one of our confirmed favorite shows, we decided to take a chance on Peaky Blinders together. Imagine our shock finding out that Sam Neill is in this and that Peaky Blinders, is in fact, pretty good. Plenty of Oppenheimer talk in this one, don’t worry. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly podcast...

“Gimme Jimmy!” is what returning guest Jeff Martin said to us, verbatim when he sat down with us to talk about the AMC prequel series to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul. We talk about convenient corruption, the fall of a moral character, Better Call Saul’s incredible cinematography and abstraction techniques, and just how awful the fictional residents of Albuquerque, New Mexico are. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly podcast about television, genre and storytelling in which...

Any excuse to talk about Walton Goggins. Lesley sits Ben down so that they can talk about Justified, the FX modern day neo western starring Timothy Olyphant as the morally grey lawman Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as irredeemable skinhead cult leader Boyd Crowder. Their dynamic is fascinating and we talk at length about the relationship between the two while dissecting what happens to crime when the law doesn’t matter round these parts. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben is a twice monthly...

The Hosts, The Producer, The Guest. We’re assembling a crack team of specialists to talk about Leverage, the heist show about criminals who rob the wealthy and corrupt. Lesley and Ben are joined by Adam P Knave, who brought us Season 2, Episode 1: The Beantown Bailout Job. We talk about safecracking, stunts and the contemporary politics of Obama Era crime and the 2008 Financial Crisis. We keep it pretty lighthearted around here. We also take a moment to talk about the luxury watch...

We welcome back Rachel Collins for… just one more thing, so that we can talk about Columbo! Peter Falk starred as Lt. Columbo from 1968 to 2003 and we’re heartbroken that we can only cover one fantastic episode of this show. And since Rachel is guesting this episode, it’s the Dick van Dyke one. Whodunits, gunshots in the junkyard, photographic evidence, fan art of Columbo’s wife and the history of TV movies, we talk about this real snapshot of 20th Century pop culture. Syndicated with Lesley...

“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Bemidji, MN in 2006. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” Are Lesley and Ben keeping up the theme of snow crimes this season? Oh you betcha! It’s time for Ben’s staff pick and while watching Fargo was an obvious choice, it was impossible to decide which one of the stellar four seasons to pick, and even harder to pick a...

Woke Up This Morning, Got Yourself a Podcast. Lesley and Ben are starting their crime season off strong with the Godfather of all crime tales. We’re covering the history of HBO, cable premium channels and Tony Soprano! We could think of no better episode than The Pine Barrens, where Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti get lost while trying to off a member of the Russian mob. Conversations about set design, the interior decorating of the 90s, and the gaudiness of the criminally rich. ...

Th-Th-Tha-That’s All Folks! Syndicated is still running, but that concludes our season on adult animation! Moving away from the all the serious subject matter and existentialism of our previous picks, we’re covering something a little goofy for the end of season two, Mike Tyson Mysteries! Talking pigeons, gentlemen ghosts, auteur theory, tight comedy writing and a lotta lotta jokes about Cormac McCarthy. Syndicated with Lesley and Ben will back soon with our third season: crime!Syndicated...

Syndicated w/ Lesley and Ben is coming to the end of our second season and that means its time for another round of Staff Picks! This time, it’s Ben’s turn to talk about a problematic fave as we deep dive into the elaborate world building of Venture Bros. We get to talk about our favorite character designs, the charm of old animation, the beginnings of Adult Swim and Patrick Warburton. Not all comedy ages great and some of it can be pretty putrid to begin with, but Lesley and Ben talk about...

Sneople at the Movies co-host, ParaScience investigator and fashionable enthusiast of Dungeons and Dragons, Ezra Kaye joins us to talk about the runaway success of Critical Role and its animated adaption: The Legend of Vox Machina. Is it a prequel, a spin off, an adaption or a remake? We talk about the nature of adaptions and how to adapt a work with a very specific lore and feeling (Dungeons and Dragons) for a much wider audience. Does the general public know what a warlock is? Do they need...

Infinity Break Marketing Director and local 30 Rock enthusiast Jay is BACK and so are we to talk about Tuca and Bertie. It only seems fitting that Lesley and Ben cover Tuca and Bertie for their adult animated season since they got their start together analyzing Bojack Horseman! We talk about Lisa Hanawalt and Raphael Bob-Waksberg and their career growth, fawn over Steven Yeun and talk about the wildly fluid animation style that populates the creatures of Tuca and Bertie. Plus, hear about the...

Jeff Martin returns to Syndicated with Lesley and Ben to bring us a show from the pits of hell, Ugly Americans. We talk about the Comedy Central show’s potential and how it ultimately missed its mark. Turns out Ugly Americans suffers from protagonist syndrome, but we still find time to applaud its character design and background animation. We talk about the minor tweaks we could make to this show to really make it stand out in the 2010 television season. Plus, hear what Ben really thinks...

It’s time for another Lesley Yates Staff Pick! Lesley suggests The Midnight Gospel to Ben and your two hosts talk about its unique format and psychedelic animation. Ben is awed by the puzzle box of trying to figure out how they sourced the audio from the interview with Duncan Trussell and Drew Pinsky and Lesley loves the original style and liquid animation of the show’s visuals. Plus, we talk about Pendleton Ward, Over the Garden Wall, recreational drug usage and decriminalization, our...

Lesley and Ben are joined by our friend and Lesley’s fiance, Héctor Gonzalez to tackle our first Adult Swim show, THE first Adult Swim show, Home Movies. We talk about the charm of the show’s macromedia flash player animation, the hallowed days of Newgrounds, manga, Questlove’s theory of creativity, Ben’s confusion over Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the CW, the power of amateur artistic expression, the book Station 11 and the good old days of using our parent’s camcorders to create movies and...

Your Mission, if you choose to accept it, is to listen to Lesley and Ben learn the ins and outs of Archer from our guest, Gabriel Dover! We talk about Archer’s creative version of continuity across its anthology format, the limited animation methods the show deploys, as well as character growth and sincerity in an otherwise zany and violent cartoon. Plus, we’d have failed in our duties if we didn’t talk about Jessica Walters at length.We’re really excited to talk about Adult Animation...

Lesley and Ben are flying solo this time and taking a trip to the moon! We’re covering Futurama - the Fox animated series that became a Comedy Central series that became a Hulu Original Series! We talk about voice actor equity in the wake of the John DiMaggio Bender news, although this episode was recorded before DiMaggio announced that he was going to join the cast of the show anyway. We take time to discuss theme parks, clashing notions of the future and reality, the artificiality of media,...

For this episode of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben, your hosts are taken to school by past guest Peter Vulfranc of These Days Are Ours to talk about Clone High, the one season MTV animated shows about the high school lives of clones of JFF, Abe Lincoln, Cleopatra, Ghandi and Joan of Arc. It’s a nostalgic ride as we talk about the jokes that don’t need to be made anymore, the art of background illustration, Luke Perry and Dawson’s Creek, the broadcasting history of the CW, the Scrub’s cast,...