British comedy podcast gets legal threat from Serial

Two British comedy podcasters were threatened with legal action over their spoof of global hit Serial.

Serial Box is a new comedy podcast series which aims to spoof the hit US-based journalism-led show. However, British comedy writers and performers Simeon Courtie and Hal Stewart found themselves in trouble before they'd even launched, in regards to how they'd used "the nineteenth letter of the alphabet" on their own logo.

Serial's Community Editor Kristen Taylor got in touch with them after having seen the promotion for the forthcoming series on social media, pointing out Serial had a problem with how they had re-worked the famous 'card stack' logo to make their own icon. The duo were asked to change the logo, or Serial would "bring our legal into this."

Stewart explains: "As comedy writers we were proud of what we'd created and confident it would be popular worldwide. But even we were surprised to hear from the makers of Serial so quickly. The first episode of Serial Box hadn't even been released!"

Courtie says: "We'd made it very clear that ours was a parody by putting the word 'box' under the letter S and adding the tagline - 'one story investigated badly'. So when they complained, we looked at what other parodies had done and almost all of them used the original logo! So we said 'Forget it. You can't seriously claim to own the letter S'." "Imagine our surprise," adds Stewart, "when they said they did."

It turns out that This American Life, the makers of Serial, have trademarked the letter 'S' used on their logo.

Sim jokes: "We had flights to Chicago on hold, and an army of lawyers chomping at the bit, but reluctantly we were forced to agree - they do in fact own the letter S and we should all be very grateful when we use it."

Serial Box has just launched, with with the logo now adjusted to be a backwards questionmark rather than the letter 'S'.

The series, which also featues spoof credits - including attributing the show as a production of 'This British Life and WD40 Luton' - focuses on the story of an American student who appears to have vanished into thin air. "Is she on the run? Has she been kidnapped? Or is something more sinister, even paranormal, at play? Ignored by the police, shrugged off by neighbours, it falls to one man, a friend she knew online, to track her down."

Serial Box is available on iTunes, SoundCloud and other podcast platforms.