Candy Claus, Private Eye is a half-hour audio comedy about Santa’s bastard daughter solving hardboiled Christmas crimes on the North Pole. Candy is a death-metal-loving, peppermint-schnapps-swilling PI trying to solve the North Pole’s first murder in 500 years without learning the true meaning of Christmas. A sendup of toxic positivity and prodigal homecomings, the show introduces characters like SANTA BLOB (a deformed snowman built as a surrogate Santa Claus), MOPPET (a gingerbread man baker conscripted as a pathologist) and GUMDROP THE WINTER SQUID (a Krampus-esque calamari committing unspeakable acts on the seafloor).
ELLA GALE: In December 2020, mid-pandemic, my mom found a coupon for a short story I gave her for Christmas when I was twelve (I'm a terrible gift-giver). Seeing no expiration date, she finally cashed it in. Mom's a big mystery reader, so I wanted to write her a mystery. And I was trying to scavenge Christmas cheer from the pandemic hellscape, so I made it a Christmas story.
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That’s how Candy Claus was born. She's Santa’s bastard daughter, a private eye with a grudging sweet tooth born on the 25th of September (you do the math). Mom was thrilled, and I had so much fun writing Candy that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I also got really into audio dramas during the pandemic, and she was a great fit for a classic mystery show. So I wrote a pilot. The idea marinated for a few years before I committed to making the show a reality. Season one explores the North Pole's seedy underbelly while still having a lot of love for Christmas.
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