Best Comedy True Crime Podcasts: Dark Humour Done Right

True crime and comedy have been uncomfortable bedfellows since at least the 1950s — think In Cold Blood, Alfred Hitchcock, the entire noir tradition. The comedy true crime podcast is a specific modern phenomenon, though, and it ranges from genuinely thoughtful (My Favorite Murder, with its feminist commentary) to deliberately transgressive (Small Town Murder, which goes further than most listeners might expect).

These shows won't be for everyone. But done well, comedy in this space serves a real purpose: it creates breathing room in material that would otherwise be unrelenting, it builds the kind of community that straight true crime can't, and it brings in listeners who might not engage with the genre in a more sombre format.

My Favorite Murder

The show that proved comedy true crime could be a mainstream phenomenon.

Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark launched My Favorite Murder in January 2016 as essentially a conversation between two friends who had always been privately fascinated by true crime. By the end of that year, they had millions of listeners and had built the "Murderino" community — one of the largest and most engaged true crime fandoms in existence.

The format is deliberately casual. Each week, both hosts research a murder case and tell it to each other — they don't know each other's stories in advance. This creates genuine reaction moments that edited, scripted podcasts can't replicate. The quality of the research varies (the hosts are comedians, not journalists), but the entertainment value is consistent.

What distinguishes My Favorite Murder from most comedy true crime shows is the ideological framing. Kilgariff and Hardstark are explicitly feminist, and they approach each case with awareness of how victims are discussed. The catchphrases ("Stay sexy, don't get murdered") are occasionally misread as victim-blaming; in context, they're about survivor empowerment. The community built around this framing is genuinely distinct from mainstream true crime fandom.

Best starting episodes: "The Zodiac Killer/Atlanta Child Murders," "BTK/The Hillside Stranglers," "The Acid Bath Murderer"

Small Town Murder

Comedian James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman cover a specific genre: murders in American small towns, always paired with an exhaustive portrait of the town itself — the geography, the demographics, the local history, what it's like to live there. The implication, consistent across hundreds of episodes, is that the town context matters — that crime doesn't happen in a vacuum.

The humour is substantially more irreverent than My Favorite Murder. Pietragallo makes jokes about the cases, the victims' choices, and the circumstances in ways that some listeners find difficult. This is intentional: the show leans into the uncomfortable absurdity of crime rather than treating it with solemn respect.

If you find My Favorite Murder too restrained or too earnest, Small Town Murder is where to go next. If you're just starting out with comedy true crime, My Favorite Murder first.

Crime in Sports

James Pietragallo's other show covers crimes committed by, against, or around professional athletes. Each episode follows the same format: thorough background on the athlete's career and context, then the crime, then the outcome.

The comedic angle is specific to the sports context — the absurdity of privilege, the failures of professional institutions to handle criminal behaviour, the contrast between an athlete's public image and their private conduct. It's not for people looking for serious sports journalism, but for listeners who want both sport knowledge and crime content, there's genuinely nothing else like it.

True Crime Comedy Podcast

Less well known than the shows above, this Canadian podcast from Eli and Rachel approaches a different format: comedy impressions, fake news stories about true crime, and satirical takes on crime coverage. It's more experimental and more inconsistent, but the best episodes — usually when they're satirising media coverage of crime rather than the crime itself — are genuinely funny and surprisingly pointed.

A good option if you want something weirder than the mainstream comedy true crime shows.

And That's Why We Drink

Hosted by Em Schulz and Christine Schiefer, And That's Why We Drink covers both true crime and supernatural topics in alternating segments each episode. Schiefer does the true crime; Schulz does the paranormal. This combination shouldn't work as well as it does.

It works because of the hosts' chemistry, which is warm and funny in a way that many comedy true crime shows try and fail to replicate. The supernatural content (hauntings, UFOs, cryptids) also serves as a tonal reset after the true crime material, which makes the crimes land harder by contrast.

Criminally Listed

Less explicitly comedic than the others on this list, but accessible and entertaining. Short, list-format episodes ("Top 10 Most Baffling Escapes," "5 Most Bizarre Poisonings") with light narration. Good for listeners who want true crime as background noise rather than careful engagement.

Is Comedy True Crime Ethical?

The genre attracts criticism, and some of it is fair.

The most legitimate criticism: comedy true crime can trivialise violence. When the death of a real person becomes a punch line, or when hosts laugh through details that would horrify a victim's family, the format fails on basic ethical grounds.

The best shows in the genre are aware of this tension. My Favorite Murder addresses it directly. Small Town Murder acknowledges it and decides, essentially, that the absurdity of violence is part of what makes it worth examining.

Where the genre tends to go wrong is with hosts who laugh at victims rather than at the circumstances, systems, or perpetrators around them. The distinction isn't always clean, but it's real.

For listeners who find the comedy true crime format uncomfortable: it's a legitimate response, and the straight true crime shows on this site will serve you better. For listeners who find it useful — who find that laughter creates space to engage with material that would otherwise be too heavy — these shows are among the most consistently entertaining in podcasting.

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