Netflix Renews 'Supacell' For Season 2

There was a time — short-lived, but it happened — when a Netflix series meant quality. From House of Cards to The Crown, these shows were well-acted with spectacular casts, gorgeous costuming, and sets; series designed to outperform HBO during the premium cable's peak. But by 2017, those in charge of streaming service had decided this was not going to work, and quantity was what was needed. Nowadays, Netflix's premium programs are few and far between — with the lion's share of those renewed going to utter junk, while the good stuff rarely lasts more than a single season, sacrificed to the almighty algorithm.

That's why it was a genuine surprise (though a welcome one) to see Netflix's critically lauded Supacell, the only show released this year by the streaming service with a current perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes, get a second season, even if it took Netflix almost the whole summer to decide to move forward with it.

It helped that the series was a sleeper hit for Netflix, released with almost zero major marketing other than what creator Rapman (real name: Andrew Onwubolu, awarded an MBE by the late Queen in 2022) drove via his personal fame. Rapman, who, as his name implies, rose to fame as a hip-hop artist in the U.K., has been directing since 2018, when he took his Blue Story trilogy of albums and turned it into first a YouTube series and then a feature film. Supacell, which Rapman created, wrote, and directed with the help of Sebastian Thiel (Dreaming Whilst Black), is a brilliant mashup of a comic book superhero story, a meditation on growing up Black in the U.K., and a celebration of the unique British Black culture that has developed in the country since World War II.