TV Rewatch Podcasts Are Close To The Can’t-Miss Label

Let’s start by defining terms. A rewatch podcast is often hosted by cast or crew members, where they revisit a TV show episode-by-episode. These podcasts discuss behind-the-scenes details, share personal memories, and re-examine scenes, providing nostalgic content for fans. They often feature celebrity hosts—such as in Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch Podcast with Michael Weatherly and Cote De Pablo —or passionate fan hosts breaking down a cult classic show.

One recent engine powering rewatch podcasts is Netflix, as it shows older TV shows, usually with a lot of episodes in its archives, and attracts either a new audience or the old audience who delights in rediscovering the show.

In a June 2, 2024, Forbes article by Monica Mercuri, the author noted: “Four years after its conclusion, Suits gained a surge in popularity when it was acquired by Netflix and released on the platform in 2023. The show spent 12 weeks at the top of Nielsen’s overall streaming chart, earning more than 2.3 billion viewing minutes week after week. The first season also spent 11 weeks on Netflix’s Top 10 TV series in the U.S.”

It was no surprise then, several months after Monica’s article, a new Suits rewatch podcast was launched called Sidebar. Suits stars Patrick J. Adams (Mike Ross) and Sarah Rafferty (Donna Paulsen) break down episodes, share behind-the-scenes stories, and interview cast and crew, offering a “watch” experience since they hadn’t seen most episodes before. The show is produced by SiriusXM’s Stitcher Studios and has been met with strong listener engagement. In fact, almost all rewatch podcasts attract enthusiastic audiences in significant numbers for advertisers.

The question is: Why?

Why are Rewatch Podcasts so attractive to audiences?

Of course, the reigning monarch of rewatch podcasts is the Star Trek franchise. There are thousands of podcasts about Star Trek TV shows – from Classic Star Trek to the latest, Starfleet Academy. Those podcasts include Blast Shield! (Lower Decks), Trek Ranks, Syfy Sistas, It’s Got Star Trek, and Ship Talking, The Delta Flyers (Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill) and Invest_igations (Gates McFadden), All Access Star Trek and Shuttle Pod.

It’s not only the self-sustaining popularity of the franchise, but also the media expansiveness of the franchise. There are more than thirteen movies (14, if you count Star Trek: Section 31 released on Paramount Plus in January 2025), and 12 TV shows. Some of these podcasts are strictly rewatch podcasts, whereby every podcast episode covers an episode in a Star Trek show.

It’s evident why rewatch podcasts are so popular with fans. Take a popular TV show, couple it with stars from that show, relive the show’s episodes on the podcast, interview the actors, creators, directors and other contributors, and you have a property close to a sure thing.

The most popular rewatch podcasts are dominated by actor-hosted shows that offer behind-the-scenes insights, led by Office Ladies (The Office), and Fake Doctors, Real Friends (Scrubs). Arguably, the most popular show on streaming, The Pitt on HBO Max already has a companion podcast, The Pitt Podcast, which is co-hosted by physician Dr. Alok Patel and culture critic Hunter Harris. It breaks down episodes with cast and crew, including Noah Wyle, while discussing the show’s medical accuracy, character drama, and behind-the-scenes details.

“There are essentially two kinds of rewatch podcasts,” says podcast consultant George Witt. “You have rewatch podcasts of current shows such as The Always Sunny Podcast, The Paradise companion Podcast on Hulu, Bridgerton: The Official Podcast, and the One Chicago Podcast, which actually covers three Chicago franchise shows – Med, Fire, and P.D.”

Witt continues: “Then you have TV shows, usually with multiple seasons, that have been cancelled but are still widely watched in reruns. For example, there’s The TV Police, a rewatch podcast of The Mentalist with cast members, Owain Yeoman, Tim Kang.”

Rewatch podcasts of cancelled shows often fall prey to cancellation because the actors on the show, now hosts of the podcast, have a scheduling conflict once they’ve found another TV show, where time off is at a premium.

For example, The Grimmcast podcast, hosted by Grimm actresses Claire Coffee, Bitsie Tulloch, and Bree Turner, ran for 31 episodes until it went on hiatus in May 2023 after covering season one. Despite promising a return after the summer, the show did not return following the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. The podcast has remained in a state of silence or quiet cancellation. Fans speculated on social media that, like many reunion-style podcasts, it was quietly cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, specifically with Bitsie Tulloch’s role in Superman & Lois, and Claire Coffee in guest roles on FBI and Law And Order.

Defining a Rewatch podcast

Cameron Stack, Audio Awards Analyst at Recognized.fm, defines rewatch podcasts this way: “When I look at the rewatch podcast space, I see four distinct niches within the category that tend to get lumped together but are meaningfully different from one another.

“The first is the fan rewatch / fandom historian podcast, built by someone with a deep, genuine connection to a specific show. The second is the celebrity or cast rewatch, where former cast members revisit their own work. These tend to attract audiences through nostalgia and access, but the motivation behind them is often career maintenance rather than genuine enthusiasm for the medium, though many do grow to love podcasting once they are in it.”

Cameron continues: “The third is the official rewatch, produced by the network or rights holder directly. These carry built-in access but come with an obvious conflict of interest since the entity evaluating the show is the one that made it. The fourth is the companion podcast, produced alongside a currently airing or recently released show to deepen engagement.

“These are fundamentally different in purpose from the other three. They are not about revisiting something. They are about extending the promotional and content lifecycle of an active property. Bundling them into rewatch metrics inflates the genre’s numbers in a way that obscures what is actually happening.”

Do Rewatch Podcasts have staying power?

One of the longest-running and most successful rewatch podcasts is The Psychologists Are In: A Psych Rewatch podcast. Launched in November 2021, actors on the show, Maggie Lawson and Timothy Omundson, have hosted the weekly rewatch podcast of the series and films. Episodes include plot recaps and behind-the-scenes memories from the two hosts. The series also features interviews with cast members, guest stars, and crew members, including writers, directors, and series creator Steve Franks.

What makes this re-watch podcast so compelling is the affection the entire crew — from the actors to the writers and even the network execs — have for one another.

Through gossip magazines like People and Us and shows like TMZ, TV viewers are often regaled with sordid tales about the making of popular TV shows rife with diva preening, egos run wild, and behavior that ranges from abusive to criminal.

Not so with Psych. From the showrunner to the writers to the actors, we have a front row seat to an object lesson on how to produce a wildly entertaining TV show without a dumpster dive into dysfunction.

“On the awards side, based on my research, virtually no major podcast awards have a dedicated rewatch or recap category,” emphasizes Cameron Stack. “The Signal Awards is the clearest exception, though worth noting that they previously had a Recaps category that appears to have been rebranded into the broader Companion Podcast category.”

Will there be more watching of Rewatch Podcasts?

The answer is maybe, because there are trends in conflict here. On one hand, as podcast networks have discovered that TV rewatch podcasts are close to risk-free, can attract brands and ads, and are relatively inexpensive to produce.

However, as streaming channels like Netflix cancel shows before they gain the requisite number of episodes and fans to warrant a rewatch podcast, low-hanging fruit like NCIS, Suits, and Supernatural may disappear. After all, can you rewatch podcast that was on Netflix for three seasons has released 30 episodes?

One of the rewatch podcasts with a unique, ultimate fate has to be SleepyCast: The Official Sleepy Hollow Podcast, which was active during the show’s original run (2014-2015) and is not currently releasing new episodes. Hosted by Clarke Wolfe, this podcast recapped episodes and featured interviews with the cast and crew.

This is a case where the TV show’s grievous errors quickly eroded the fan base of the podcast. The show floundered in its second season, and was labeled a disappointment, even by its most loyal fans. The show limped along for two more seasons with constant cast changes and convoluted plots.

One driver of TV rewatch podcasts has been fan conventions such as Comic-Con and the thousands of other lesser-known conventions where stars from these cancelled but not forgotten TV shows answer questions from dedicated fans, give autographs and leak harmless gossip from the show’s inner workings. These conventions perpetuate the keen interest in these shows, often convincing fans or the actors that a TV rewatch podcast is another way to reinvent the show, make some money, and re-introduce these actors to the cultural conversation once again.