I used NotebookLM to "watch" a show, and honestly, I might do it again

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could win the Guinness World Record for having the worst memory. I've watched Stranger Things five times, but if you asked me what happened in a single season, I'd stare at you like you just asked me a physics question. At the same time, I am the definition of a TikTok and Instagram addict, and, well, my feeds are always filled with fan edits, iconic quotes, and plot twists from shows I’ve never actually watched.

Naturally, a lot of times I'm tempted to watch the show just to understand the context behind all the content I see popping up. But the thing about shows nowadays is that most of them tend to be spread across multiple seasons, and with college and work, I don't have the time (or energy) to commit to an entire series just to understand a seconds-long edit I saw at 2AM.

So, I had a wild idea: what if there was a way to skip the whole “watching” part altogether? I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. Blasphemous, even. But once the idea popped into my head, I needed to see it through. And I knew the perfect tool for it: NotebookLM. So, that’s exactly what I did. I used NotebookLM to “watch” a show I’ve never actually seen: The Queen's Gambit.

Here’s how I set up the experiment in NotebookLM

The magic lies in the sources you feed it

If you aren't familiar with the tool I'm using here, NotebookLM is Google's AI-powered personalized research assistant. While there are multiple AI tools that could've browsed the web and summarized The Queen's Gambit for me, NotebookLM's source-grounded nature is what made it the perfect pick for this little experiment. NotebookLM essentially builds a personalized AI that's only familiar with the sources you upload to each notebook. Ultimately, NotebookLM works best when you spend a bit of time curating quality sources for it to learn from.

So, in this case, I created a new notebook specifically to “watch” The Queen's Gambit and uploaded multiple in-depth episode summaries as sources. While there were websites with detailed recaps and reviews for each episode, NotebookLM weirdly didn’t accept those pages as sources. They were also spread across separate webpages, so I used a Chrome extension called Myndo to compile and upload them all at once.

NotebookLM also accepts YouTube videos as sources and pulls information directly from their transcripts, so I added a few explainers about the show's themes and endings to give it a well-rounded knowledge base.

How I went from zero to fake fan using NotebookLM

Spoiler alert: It actually worked

Here's where the fun actually began. Once the sources were uploaded and processed, it was finally time to start "watching" The Queen's Gambit. I started off with the most basic NotebookLM feature there is (but also the tool’s biggest strength): prompting the AI with questions based on the sources I’d fed it. Here's the exact prompt I started off with:

Within seconds, I had an in-depth recap of the show as a whole, along with an episode-to-episode breakdown. Of course, a single response alone wasn’t enough to get me entirely familiar with the show. Thankfully, NotebookLM not only suggests follow-up questions you can ask.

You can also prompt it to dive deeper into a specific episode or a certain plot point. As with any NotebookLM response, every claim it makes has citations right next to it, and hovering over them shows exactly which part of the source the AI pulled that information from.

After asking NotebookLM multiple questions about the confusions I had and diving into specific moments I didn’t fully grasp, I started to feel like I actually got into the show. But I still wanted to go a step further, so I figured it was time to use my favorite NotebookLM features.

I generated a custom Audio Overview using the same prompt as above and had an in-depth podcast recapping the entire show in minutes. I listened to the overview while doing my makeup one morning, and it felt like I was talking to a friend who was obsessed with the show.

Given that NotebookLM launched the Video Overviews feature not too long ago, I decided to generate one of those too. Though the nine-minute video didn’t have striking visuals related to the show (which isn’t surprising, since the feature’s still in its early days), I found it surprisingly engaging to watch. It felt like a YouTube-style explainer, with diagrams and bullet-point lists highlighting key characters and themes.

By this time, I had figured out that The Queen's Gambit’s plotline didn’t have a lot of twists and turns. If it did, the Mind Map feature would've been gold for it. But even then, it was fun seeing the entire show summed up in a visual branching diagram.

NotebookLM created separate nodes for Beth's early life & orphanage (Methuen Home), Adoption & Competitive Chess Debut, Rise & Challenges, Descent & Redemption, Moscow Invitational & World Champion, and Core Themes of the show.

NotebookLM also lets you generate different types of reports, and I figured the Timeline format would be the most useful for this use case. Sure enough, it laid out all the major events in chronological order, giving me a quick, scrollable rundown of how everything unfolded. It also listed the Cast of Characters at the bottom, divided into principal and minor characters.

By the end of this experiment, just to see how well I’d absorbed everything, I spent about an hour scrolling through Queen’s Gambit reels on Instagram and TikTok, and not once did I feel lost. I even took a couple of online quizzes about the show and scored full marks on nearly all of them.

So...safe to say that the experiment was a success, right? Now, will this ever replace the experience of watching a show the real way? No. But when you don’t have the time (or let’s be real, the attention span), this hack comes pretty close.

Honestly, I’ll be using this trick again

Though I typically have high expectations when I’m trying out new NotebookLM features or running random experiments with the tool, my expectations for this one weren’t sky-high. I figured it would give me a general idea of the plot at best, and maybe help me fake my way through a conversation or two. But by the end of it, I genuinely felt like I’d watched the show.

I also tried this with a show I've watched more times than I can count — Gilmore Girls. Funnily enough, it helped me spot a few character details and plot points I’d somehow never paid attention to!