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.