Talks Underway for 'Adolescence' Season 2

C'mon y'all, say it with me: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that..." ...when a TV series is a hit, renewal is in the cards. This has become far more of a given since the streaming wars began, and anything that was a known property became a safer bet than new works, leading to a massive influx of revivals, reboots, and reimaginings. It also means limited series that do well suddenly stop being so limited (or at least are pushed to consider being less limited). Some creators are all about keeping the hit parade going. The Handmaid's Tale, for example, initially meant to be a limited series, is currently on Season 6, and there's a sequel series coming from an entirely new book author Margaret Atwood gamely wrote for them.

British shows were initially less willing to break with their creative vision for further profit. A perfect example: Chernobyl, the stunning hit from HBO and Sky that premiered in 2019, refused to consider any follow-up. However, once the pandemic hit, things changed in that sphere, with Time, The Responder, and The Tourist all going from limited series to having Season 2s in the works by 2022. Now, Netflix finds itself in the same position, with the experimental series Adolescence becoming Netflix UK's biggest hit to date — a series that was clearly not made to support a second season.

The production team, led by director Philip Barantini and writer/star Stephen Graham (who also made the film Boiling Point and then a four-part TV sequel, both of which used Adolescence's real-time format), have been making all the right polite noises when asked about Season 2 without actually saying yes. Now, Deadline reports its American producers, Brad Pitt's Plan B, have sat them down for "talks" about "the next iteration" of the series.

The phrasing here is key. "Next iteration" could mean taking Adolescence and making a follow-up story with the same characters or a reverse perspective where the girl who was killed is centered instead of the killer. It could be an anthology where some of the same characters deal with a different incident of school violence or an anthology series where the only thing that connects them is the real-time format, which would allow Boiling Point to become part of the set. Just so long as Netflix can market it as "the follow up" to Adolescence. 

Plan B co-president Dede Gardner told Deadline, "Phil’s style of doing the episodes in one take is not a gimmick. It’s very much in conversation with the subject matter. In early conversations with Stephen and Jack [Thorne, scriptwriter], they were talking about how it’s too easy to look away. You can look away from the school, you can look away from the police station, you can look away from the counseling, you can look away from the family. You can duck the issue in that kind of prismatic way of viewing. So our theory was, what would happen if you couldn’t look away? And will that make the subject embedded in you in a different way? That was a thrilling thing.”

Season 1 of Adolescence featured Graham plus Owen Cooper (Film Club), Ashley Walters (Missing You), Erin Doherty (The Crown), Faye Marsay (Andor), Christine Tremarco (The Responder), Mark Stanley (Happy Valley), Jo Hartley (Passenger), and newcomer Amélie Pease.

The series was created and written by Graham with Thorne (Joy) and directed by Barantini, with Jo Johnson producing. Barantini executive produces for It’s All Made Up Productions, Thorne for One Shoe Films, Graham with Hannah Walters for Matriarch Productions, Mark Herbert & Emily Feller with Peter Balm & Niall Shamma as Co-Executive Producers for Warp Films, and Pitt, Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Nina Wolarsky & Carina Sposato as co-executive producers for Plan B Entertainment.

All four episodes of Adolescence are streaming on Netflix. Boiling Point (the series) is also on Netflix through the end of April 2025, and the Boiling Point film streams on Prime Video in the States.