Blackout

Blackout is the show that put Qcode on the map, and honestly, it still holds up. Rami Malek plays Simon Itani, a small-town New Hampshire radio DJ who becomes an unlikely leader when the entire national power grid goes dark. Season one is a tense survival story that nails the claustrophobia of a community turning on itself when the lights go out. The sound design does a lot of heavy lifting here -- you genuinely feel the darkness pressing in through your headphones. Season two shifts perspective to Aja Naomi King as Wren Foster, and while it takes the story in a very different direction, it keeps the same unsettling energy. The writing is sharp about how quickly social structures fall apart when resources get scarce. Scott Conroy created something that works both as a thriller and as a character study of people pushed past their limits. With 24 episodes across two seasons, a 4.6-star rating from over 27,000 reviews, and production values that rival anything on television, Blackout remains the gold standard for what a scripted podcast can be. It premiered in 2019 and was one of the first fiction podcasts to really attract mainstream attention. If you are new to audio drama and want to understand what the fuss is about, start here.