Jamie Dornan Thriller 'The Tourist' Lands a Second Season

Jamie Dornan in "The Tourist" (Photo by Ian Routledge/Two Brothers Pictures)

The Tourist

Despite the fact that it was originally intended as a limited series, the Jamie Dornan-led thriller The Tourist will return for a second season. 

The news comes as part of a flurry of BBC renewal announcements that also saw Suranne Jones' submarine thriller Vigil and Martin Freeman's crime series The Responder land new seasons, along with the acclaimed prison drama Time, though it will return with an all-new cast and setting and become an anthology. 

The first season of The Tourist follows the story of a Northern Irish man who wakes up in the Australian outback with amnesia following a brutal car accident. Enlisting the help of a rookie Australian cop, he works to piece together his identity and the details behind the crash that nearly killed him, all while dodging merciless figures from the past he doesn't remember. And though the Season 1 finale revealed some dark—and potentially deadly—secrets about his past, it looks like we'll get the chance to dig further into what it all means when the series returns. 

Despite the fact that The Tourist was very obviously conceptualized as a limited, single-run series, news of its renewal won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who pays attention to U.K. ratings. The series was the highest-rated BBC drama of 2022 to date, launching with over 12 million viewers. With those kinds of numbers, a Season 2 was sort of a foregone conclusion.

What will it involve, storywise, is anyone's guess. But, per Variety, Season 2 will once again consist of six 60-minute episodes. Emmy-winning producers and screenwriters Harry and Jack Williams (Fleabag) will return to write the second season and serve as executive producers alongside Christopher Aird and Tommy Bulfin.

The Tourist isn't the first role for Dornan that's gone on a bit longer than he initially signed up for. His breakout role in the crime drama The Fall was only ever meant to be a single season, but the critical acclaim and rating success that followed the series' debut meant that it went on to run for three. How long might The Tourist last? Your guess is as good as hours, but stranger things have certainly happened. 

No word yet on when we might expect to see the next season of the Outback-set thriller, but mid to late 2023 seems like the safest bet. 

Season 1 of The Tourist is currently streaming on HBO Max. 


Lacy Baugher

Lacy's love of British TV is embarrassingly extensive, but primarily centers around evangelizing all things Doctor Who, and watching as many period dramas as possible.

Digital media type by day, she also has a fairly useless degree in British medieval literature, and dearly loves to talk about dream poetry, liminality, and the medieval religious vision. (Sadly, that opportunity presents itself very infrequently.) York apologist, Ninth Doctor enthusiast, and unabashed Ravenclaw. Say hi on Threads or Blue Sky at @LacyMB. 

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