Review: Secret Dinosaur Cult at the Manchester Podcast Festival

For their first ‘cult meeting’ outside of London, comedians Sofie Hagen and Jodie Mitchell prepared a programme that consisted of dinosaur news, therapy talk, filling your ‘daddy hole’ and dinosaur-themed pornographic literature. Perhaps dinosaur comedy is the beginning of a thriving new sub-genre of podcast. Or maybe not.

One of the first comments to the audience was one of thanks for ‘taking a chance’ on this new podcast. Unsurprisingly, most of the audience were drawn to it from Sofie Hagen’s well established podcast ‘Made Of Human’, in which she interviews many of the UK’s leading comics about how they do life.

Her new endeavour, undertaken with comedian Jodie Mitchell, asks the audience to ‘come and listen to how we navigate living life through the medium of dinosaurs.’ It’s an intriguing concept but unfortunately that’s about it. There were the remnants of a structure following the show’s pitch however it all just seemed a little under-prepared and lacked any enthusiasm.

Hagen and Mitchell almost assumed before they’d even begun that the audience were already won over and eagerly awaiting their insightful perceptions of life. I think that was a little too self-indulgent. Anecdotes were unnecessarily drawn out, at best quite funny, at worst recycled from previous routines. 

There is no doubt that they are funny comedians. However, to expect an audience to sit (for over an hour) listening to what was essentially just a random, generic conversation about life, is a little disappointing.

From Hagen, a highly acclaimed comic, winning the Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2015, and already established in the podcast world with ‘Made Of Human’, I expected more. I hope to see the podcast evolve into something hilariously niche and profound but it’s currently far from that.