'Sherwood' Season 2 To Bring Back Lesley Manville & David Morrissey

Sherwood Season 1 was one of the BBC’s biggest surprise hits of 2022. James Graham’s story, based on the real-life 2004 double manhunt in Sherwood forest, was a star-studded affair with a who’s who of British A-listers in the cast. Despite being billed as a true crime mystery, the six-episode series was focused on the red wall towns of Northern England, which never emotionally recovered from Margaret Thatcher’s breaking of the 1980s era miner’s strike, and how those divisions still stand. The series is returning with Lesley Manville (Magpie Murders) and David Morrissey (Britannia) reprising their roles.

Graham’s original script for Sherwood updated the search from 2004 to 2014 but remained a closed-ended story. The chase ended with both suspects found as the cops realized these murders were unrelated; Andy Fisher (Adeel Akhtar), who accidentally killed his Tory daughter-in-law (Joanne Froggatt), committed suicide by cop, while Scott (Adam Hugill), who shot unionist Gary Jackson (Alun Armstrong) with a bow and arrow, was arrested. Meanwhile, those who assumed the murders were somehow related to the strike all those years ago found a measure of peace after openly discussing what happened in 1984 for the first time.

The BBC’s initial announcement the show would get a second season was accompanied by writer Graham saying he planned for this to be an anthology, with stories set in these working-class Northern England villages dealing with the ramifications of almost 30 years of Tory rule. However, with the announcement of Manville and Morrissey reprising their roles, it seems this season is less of an unrelated story set in the same area and more of a direct follow-up.