A Starship, a Kitchen, a Panelled Room — What Virtual Sets Are Actually For
Look at almost any video podcast and you will see the same room.
A bookshelf. A plant. Some letters spelling a word. Maybe a neon sign, because someone decided in about 2021 that neon signs meant "podcast". It's fine. It's also completely silent about what the show is. You could swap the set between a true-crime series and a fintech interview show and nobody would notice.
That's not laziness. It's economics.
Sets became generic because sets got built
A physical set is a construction project. Someone designs it, someone builds it, it gets lit, and then it has to live somewhere between recordings. Which means it has to be neutral enough to work for every episode, and for the other shows using the same room next Tuesday. Neutral is the only affordable answer, so neutral is what everybody gets.
The moment you want a set that's genuinely about your show, you're into build days, storage, and a bill that only makes sense if you're recording a hundred episodes. For the vast majority of shows, the numbers simply don't work. So the bookshelf stays.
What changes when the set is software
Our studios are virtual. The sets are 3D environments rather than furniture — nothing to build, store, shift, light or repaint.
That sounds like a technical detail, and for a while I described it as one. It isn't. It moves the set from a capital decision to a creative one. You're no longer asking "can we afford to build this?" You're asking the far more interesting question: what should this show look like?
And that question has actual answers. A show about science fiction can be recorded on the bridge of a ship, rather than in a room with a bookshelf where people discuss ships. A show about food can be shot in a kitchen — a real-looking one, lit properly, without hiring a kitchen. A show about politics or law can sit in a panelled room that carries the seriousness the conversation is trying to have. A finance show can have a city behind it at dusk instead of a corporate grey wall. A music show can be in a venue rather than an office. A show about architecture and design can simply be somewhere beautiful, which is the entire point of the show.
None of these are gimmicks. They're the same instinct television has always had — that where you put people tells the audience what kind of programme this is, before anyone says a word.
The bit that surprises people
You can change it.
Not "commission a rebuild and wait a month" change it. Change it between series, between episodes, or — and this has genuinely happened — during the conversation where you're deciding.
We had a booking come forward by a day because of a diary mix-up. On a physical set that's a small crisis: the build day you'd allowed for has vanished. On ours it meant getting on with it sooner. Our producer stood behind me and picked the colour of the curtains. The client opened an AI tool while we were still on the call, made their logo, and sent it across. I dropped it into the set as a neon sign with a soft glow and a shadow falling on the curtains behind it. Done, while we were talking. (Yes — a neon sign. I'm aware.)
That's the actual difference. Not that the set looks good. That it can respond at the speed the show is thinking. I've written up that week in full, because it's the clearest example we've had.
How it works here in practice
There's a set of standard studios to choose from, and several of those can carry your logo or a show graphic on the studio monitor at no extra cost. If you want to go further, we can set-dress: move the furniture and pictures, change the lighting, repaint the walls — none of which involves anyone actually holding a paintbrush.
And if you want something that is unmistakably yours, there's a studio design service that builds you your own digital environment from scratch. Once it exists, it's yours, it's stored as data, and it comes back identical every time you record. No fading, no chips in the paint, no "where did the second lamp go".
One honest warning
A set can be too clever.
If the environment is doing more work than the conversation, something has gone wrong. A starship bridge is a brilliant home for a show about science fiction and an actively bad one for a serious interview series about grief. The point isn't spectacle — it's fit. The best version of this is when a viewer never consciously notices the set at all, and simply feels that the show is what it says it is.
The bookshelf isn't wrong because it's boring. It's wrong because it's an answer nobody chose.
If you're thinking about it
Come and see what the standard studios look like — there's usually a live view of the studio when we're recording. Or bring us the show and we'll tell you honestly whether a bespoke set would earn its place, or whether one of ours already does the job.
Studio hire is £200 an hour ex VAT at 75 Dean Street in Soho, 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday.
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