'Ridley' Renewed for Season 2 Ahead of PBS Premiere

American audiences who tune in to PBS' new series Ridley will be able to watch with confidence that it won't be the series only run of episodes. ITV confirmed the show had been renewed for a second season with only a few days until the show's premiere as part of the PBS Summer of Mysteries. The series, which stars Adrian Dunbar as titular Alex Ridley, the retired detective/hobbyist jazz singer, was a hit for the British broadcaster in the summer of 2022, with episodes averaging 6 million viewers over four installments. Despite that, the network waited until the series was about to arrive in the states before making the decision to renew official.

Inspired by real-life retired detectives re-joining the police in consultancy roles due to increasingly over-stretched resources, Ridley co-stars Bronagh Waugh as DI Carol Farman, Ridley's former protege who now leads the team. The early episodes reveal Ridley was forced into early retirement after a nervous breakdown brought on by the deaths of his wife and child a few months prior, and Season 1's arc is as much about him coming to terms with how they died and adjusting to his new life as it is a murder-of--the-week series.

Despite ITV waiting nearly a year before making the announcement, it's not that big of a surprise Ridley is returning for another round. Series creator Paul Matthew Thompson is a veteran of two long-running British detective series popular on both sides of the pond, Vera (currently filming Season 13) and Father Brown (currently streaming Season 10). Though critics and viewers complained when it debuted that Ridley is a very by-the-numbers formulaic series, Dunbar is a charming lead, and his tendency to break into song multiple times per episode at least gives the show a different flavor than its competition.