Podcast-inspired docudrama The Nobody Zone: Interview with an Irish Serial Killer heads for Netflix UK & Ireland

Netflix UK & Ireland has acquired RTÉ Factual’s in-house docudrama The Nobody Zone Interview with an Irish Serial Killer, based on RTÉ Documentary on One’s award-winning podcast.

The 2 x 50 mins docudrama, which will roll out on Netflix on September 1, was produced and directed by Brian Hayes and executive produced by Darragh Byrne from RTÉ Television’s Factual Department. The two-parter is based on RTÉ Documentary on One and Third Ear Denmark’s acclaimed true-crime podcast The Nobody Zone. Since The Nobody Zone was first published in 2020, it has gone on to receive more than five million podcast listens in almost 200 countries. And it continues to receive hundreds of thousands of new listens each year, proving its enduring power as a story by drawing in new audiences at home and abroad.

The TV adaptation blends documentary and drama to draw viewers into the warped world of Kieran Patrick Kelly, an Irish drifter who was arrested in London in 1983 for a relatively minor misdemeanour. During his interview with the police, however, Kelly confessed to a series of brutal murders going back over 30 years, recounting his crimes with spine-chilling candour over 120 minutes of taped interrogation. But was Kelly really Ireland’s most prolific serial killer? Questions remain about the real purpose of his unprompted confession — questions that Byrne and the team of documentary-makers set out to answer with the help of investigators, forensic psychologists, researchers and even a builder who employed Kelly as a casual labourer.

Darragh Byrne from RTÉ Television’s Factual Department said: “It was great to be able to offer a fresh dimension to this story using the ‘lip syncing’ technique that director Brian Hayes so powerfully deploys, producing in-house the highest production standards for an international audience.’’

Liam O’Brien, RTÉ Documentary on One series produce, said: “The original podcast’s success was volcanic and for good reason. Not only was The Nobody Zone a real, untold story — the gold standard for any true-crime title — but its gripping mix of plot twists, tension and raw testimony was better than any Hollywood movie script.”

Edel Edwards, head of programme sales at RTÉ, added: “Darragh, Brian and Liam have done an incredible job of migrating this extraordinary story from podcast to screen. The fact that Netflix has picked it up for Ireland and the UK is more confirmation that the streamers’ appetite for true-crime continues to build — as long as the quality is right.”