Alex Sims, commissioning editor:

“Technically not a podcast, but a series of short stories on BBC Sounds, The Hotel by former Booker-prize nominee Daisy Johnson is a collection of 15 dark, supernatural tales about the history of a mysterious hotel that looms over The Fens. Written in a similar style to Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe, each of the episodes tells a different story about people’s uncanny encounters with the building and they’re all read magnificently by acclaimed actors like Adjoa Andoh, Nicola Walker, Anne-Marie Duff, Maxine Peake and Juliet Stevenson. I’ve listened to a lot of short stories over the pandemic to try and transport me out of the hellscape we’ve all been living in and these creepy, mesmerising ghost stories were a deliciously eerie distraction.”

The very best podcasts we listened to this year – and why we loved them so much