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Edd Hedges was woken up on July 22, 2015, by a furious banging on his front door and a woman standing at the end of his bed, who simply warned him: ‘Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights.’
Granted: That woman was his mother, as Hedges explained in his 2017 stand-up comedy show, which he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when true crime TV producer Jodi Tovay happened upon his show, which told the story of the ‘most terrifying’ night of his life.
But what came next is no joke: It emerged that a 23-year-old man had killed his family, stabbing his mother to death 41 times, and had arrived at Hedges’ home in the small English village of Saffron Walden looking for him. That was what the banging was all about. Gulp.
Shaken into action by his story, Tovay left her Fringe holiday early and got to work on what would turn into a nine-year investigation, all laid out in this podcast with Hedges’ set woven through it.
Wisecrack is billed as podcast studio Tenderfoot TV’s boldest series yet, the first episode of which is out now. The six-part series will be released weekly and has serious nods to Baby Reindeer, comedian Richard Gadd’s Netflix series documenting his horrendous stalking ordeal.
Like Baby Reindeer – and its origins as Gadd’s 2016 live comedy show Monkey, See Monkey Do – this project began at the Edinburgh Fringe via Hedges’ stand-up hour, in which he told this unlikely tale.
Now, eight years on, his story is being shared via the iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV co-production.
‘I was taking a break from making crime television when Edd’s story found me,’ said Jodi Tovay, Host & Producer of Wisecrack.
‘The moment I heard his set, it stopped me in my tracks. My curiosity took over, and I left vacation early and got to work, knowing that everyone needed to hear this immediately.’
‘If you want to hear about my father with 8 fingers, how my mother became an accidental meth dealer, and uncover why my neighbor became a murderer, then Wisecrack is for you,’ said Hedges.
‘I tried to deal with the trauma of that night through comedy, but I wasn’t willing to fully drop my guard. This podcast faces it all, head-on.’
At the beginning of the podcast, Hedges – who won the So You Think You’re Funny? talent hunt in 2013 – warns: ‘Everything I’m going to tell you is completely true apart from three lies.’ (He promises to tell us where these are.)
‘Wisecrack uses the art of stand-up comedy as a device to tell a narrative story, where every punchline hides something darker. I don’t think podcast listeners have ever experienced anything quite like it,’ added Donald Albright, Tenderfoot TV Co-founder and CEO.
Wisecrack comes in a long line of productions which originated at the Edinburgh Fringe, including Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh many moons ago.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fringe hit Fleabag is one of the festival’s biggest modern successes, released on TV nine years ago and sparking a flurry of one-woman shows.
However, the lure of Netflix and adaptation stardom isn’t bending the Edinburgh Fringe to its will – as comedians told Metro this August that years later they are trauma-ed out.
While TV and productions typically take years to be processed and drop on streamers – like Baby Reindeer did – on the ground, the Fringe has moved on and has lost its appetite for this trauma-heavy drama/comedy crossover.
Francesca Moody, who was behind the stage shows of both Baby Reindeer and Fleabag before they hit the big screens, told Metro about the complicated relationship between theatre and other media forms.
‘I think historically, there has been a little bit of a “yoink” mentality of TV coming in, grabbing and taking an artist away from theatre and then making loads of money, but like not really remunerating at that end,’ she said.
‘I think we need each other in order to survive. Ultimately, there has to be a bit more cohesion between the different mediums, because the interesting, unusual, knotty, thorny, risky stories and artists are always making work in small-scale theatre. That’s a place where you can take risks.’
The first episode of Wisecrack has been released with new episodes out each Wednesday on all platforms, distributed by iHeartPodcasts.
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