Season 1 of the HBO prequel series It: Welcome to Derry just dropped. Promising to expand on the origins of Pennywise using the original Stephen King book as a jumping off point and made by the same creative team behind the 2017 and 2019 films, this one has piqued the interest of genre fans since it was announced.
To mark this momentous occasion, your favorite Stephen King obsessed podcast hosts are launching a new watchalong show titled Watching It: Welcome to Derry. Anthony Breznican and myself will be coming at you every week with a new podcast breaking down the events of every episode and giving our critiques. Did we like it? Did we hate it? How much of the book is making it into the show? What fun easter eggs are there for constant readers and fans of the films?
This first episode starts off incredibly strong, with one hell of a cold open that begins with a happy Technicolor musical and ends with… well, a less happy Technicolor musical. You wouldn’t think an It TV show would begin with The Music Man, but somehow it perfectly sets the stage for the oh so pleasantly unpleasant hour that follows as Robert Preston sings to the citizens of River City warning of trouble in their small town.
Much hay has been made about Pennywise not showing up early in this season, but that’s just talking about the clown persona of the evil entity that plagues Derry, Maine. Pennywise is one of many masks It wears, so don’t mistake the talk of Bill Skarsgard being saved for later in the season to mean you’re not getting any juicy horrors up front. This first episode has a few show-stopping set pieces where It’s creations are front and center, starting with a particularly gnarly opening sequence (no, not The Music Man, the stuff that happens just after The Music Man) and ending with a glorious and bloody rugpull that resets the board and your expectations of what this show will be as it continues its eight-episode run.
Breznican and myself dive into all these moments and more in the inaugural episode of Watching IT: Welcome to Derry which you can ingest in multiple ways. This new watchalong show is available as a video podcast as well as audio courtesy of the Fangoria Podcast Network and the show’s sponsor Blackmagic.
You can find the video podcast on YouTube or any podcast platform that supports video. For easy reference, the first episode is embedded below:
For you traditionalists who prefer audio only, you can find the show on all of your favorite podcatchers by searching for Watching IT: Welcome to Derry or visiting the landing page over at Audioboom which is linked below.
I can’t wait to explore this show episode by episode with Breznican and I hope y’all will follow along for all our nerdy Stephen King deep dives while Watching IT: Welcome to Derry.
