Overcoats Takes Gold, And More

WOODEN OVERCOATS - GOLD AWARD
BEST FICTION CATEGORY,
BRITISH PODCAST AWARDS 2023

Last night, a very surprised David K Barnes skipped down to the front of the room at the 2023 British Podcast Awards ceremony and collected the gong saying that Wooden Overcoats is the very best, top of the heap, no questions or exemptions, fiction podcast. There, you can see him doing it, up there! The whole thing was captured by the glossy event’s camera crews, and you can see the full clip on the BPAs’ Twitter feed, here.

If you’ve been living under a rock, for goodness’s sakes, Wooden Overcoats is a podcast sitcom, one of the first of its kind, about two rival funeral directors on a Channel Island called Piffling. It starred myself, Felix Trench, Beth Eyre, and Ciara Baxendale, with Belinda Lang as the narrator, a mouse called Madeleine. It lasted four seasons, three seasonal specials and a few runs of mini-episodes, most of which was paid for by crowdfunding from our surprisingly large and impressively global listener base. David thanked the listeners first and foremost in his winner interview, at that same link, and I think that was exactly correct. We worked hard after launching the show to get it out there as far and wide as possible, but once the ball started rolling, it was entirely through the enthusiastic support and bellowed word-of-mouth of our early adopters that made it the global hit it was at the time of its final episode’s release. Thank you, all of you, as ever.

I’ve already written about how much I loved Wooden Overcoats and all the people involved, and what a crucial and formative part of my life is spanned by the years that we were making it. No, I have, I put all that in another news post, here. You can read it if you like! If you do, you’ll notice that the final episode released a year and six months ago, so getting this award now feels rather strange! Like being handed a gold medal for the hundred metre dash years after you left Piffling St Clôture. Still, what a joy to pin this bit of merchandise on the show as a final tribute to the whole experience and all the wonderful people who made it.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL

I was also involved in two other brilliant programmes honoured at the awards! The Rez, Gen Z Media’s brilliant children’s sci-fi drama, full of jokes, lessons and canny observations about kids’ lives and wellbeing, took Bronze in the Kids category. I starred in quite a lot of this second season, playing the troubled inventor Zzzucks, who becomes more crucial to the thrilling dystopian artificial intelligence adventure than he had bargained for. Both seasons of The Rez make for a wonderful, fun, bubbly, thrilling adventure for kids that will also teach them a lot about being kind to one another and themselves.

And what’s more, Emma Hickman’s Eliza: A Robot Story from Crowd Network, was also nominated in the Fiction category alongside Wooden Overcoats. It’s a slickly-produced allegory about coercive control starring Tanya Reynolds and Arthur Darvill, and featuring me in a variety of supporting roles throughout the series. It’s a heavy listen, but worthwhile, and beautifully made.

It’s a banner year for little Tom Crowley when he gets to be in three - not one, not two, but three - award-nominated podcasts, and even moreso when all three of them were made with such care and attention by such dedicated teams of creatively shining professionals. Thanks to all of them for having me, whether it’s been eight years or one. May a thousand more podcasts bloom in their wake!