Midnight Burger
"A must-listen indie podcast." - The Guardian
"A beautiful, kind, wonderful story." - BBC Radio
When Gloria took a waitressing job at a diner outside of Phoenix, she didn't realize she was now an employee of Midnight Burger, a time-traveling, dimension-spanning diner. Every day Midnight Burger appears somewhere new in the cosmos along with it's staff: a galactic drifter, a rogue theoretical physicist, a sentient old-timey radio, and some guy named Caspar. No one knows who built Midnight Burger or how it works, but when it appears there's always someone around who could really use a cup of coffee.
At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. We open at 6.
Our Editor's Take
Over the last several years, the audio drama format has become more popular again. This style of storytelling, in many ways, harkens back to the Golden Age of Radio. Midnight Burger is a podcast that takes a modern approach to this style of storytelling.
Midnight Burger combines heartfelt storytelling with a query and surreal concept. Audiences who are sitcom fans or love shows like Doctor Who may enjoy this series. The premise of the podcast is a simple but fun one. Gloria, who has lost her job due to the pandemic, ends up taking a job at a diner called Midnight Burger. Located on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, it seems, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the diner. At least, at first it seems that way.
Soon Gloria realizes that her employer is not a regular diner that serves burgers and fries. Instead, the podcast travels through time and different dimensions. On Midnight Burger,Gloria and its staff are never quite sure of where they are going to end up, or who they are going to meet along the way.
The other characters on Midnight Burger help to develop this world and make it feel real to the listener. An interstellar vagabond, a crazed physicist, and a talking radio are only some of the people in the diner. As the diner crosses the strata of space and time, the staff try to help as many people as they can.
In many ways, Midnight Burger borrows from the best of sci-fi conventions. However, it also finds new ways to subvert them. It has elements of both Star Trek and Douglas Adams' writing.
One of the best aspects of Midnight Burger is its stellar cast, led by Siouxsie Suarez Caspar. The voice acting on this podcast makes these fictional characters easy to care about. The supporting cast does an excellent job as well. The podcast has new episodes each Tuesday.
Season 4
