Listener sentiment
The picture has not improved since the last summary: recent ratings remain dominated by disillusioned longtime listeners rather than new fans. The most recurrent complaints are unchanged — heavy advertising and upselling, paid content feeling thin for the price, unrelated shows being pushed into the feed, and the hosts' political commentary crowding out film reviews, which several reviewers say prompted them to finally unsubscribe. A notable newer thread is a sense that the chemistry has gone stale: reviewers describe the conversation as stilted since the pair stopped recording together in person, with weaker reviews, audio glitches, and a loss of the live energy that defined the BBC years. Defenders still praise Kermode's criticism, the interviews, and the comforting old-friends rapport, and some explicitly welcome the political stance — but they are now clearly outnumbered, and several of the most affectionate reviews still ding the feed pollution. Overall, the dominant sentiment among the show's most invested listeners is fond farewell rather than active hostility: repeated phrasing of gratitude for decades of listening paired with a verdict that the current version is a shadow of what it was.
Apple3.5 · 589
Summary generated Oct 10, 2026
