Source : the age
Creating a distinctive and absorbing opening season of a TV series is an accomplishment. But following it up with a second, equally satisfying outing? It’s an equally impressive feat that usually doesn’t attract as much attention.
While maintaining the qualities that distinguished the debut, it needs to build on characters and themes, and develop in audacious and imaginative ways. A high standard has been set; now show us you can do that again. Here are six recent second-season successes that manage to do just that.
Warning: spoilers for season one of Paradise below.
Paradise (Disney+)
Ambitious, intricately plotted and packed with surprises, this futuristic series represents a departure for creator Dan Fogelman, who previously gave us the estimable domestic drama This is Us. Here Sterling K. Brown plays a secret-service agent assigned to protect the US president (James Marsden), living in what initially appears to be a sunny suburbia. But through the first season a different reality emerges. This place really is a meticulously planned, tightly controlled refuge for survivors of a climate catastrophe, hidden beneath a ruined world.
In the new season the two worlds collide and, from its stunning, left-field opening, starring a terrific Shailene Woodley, to the nail-biting conclusion, it maintains the momentum, substance and suspense. A rich mix of ingredients – love story, family drama, social study, apocalyptic thriller – this stylish and cleverly crafted series generates the satisfying impression that those steering it know exactly what they’re doing. A third season is eagerly anticipated.
Netflix
The Four Seasons (Netflix)
Co-created by Tina Fey and based on the 1981 Alan Alda film, this vibrant comedy touches lightly on issues of birth, death, love and grief, as well as the complexities of longtime relationships. As the production sings to the spirit-lifting strains of Vivaldi’s violin concertos celebrating seasonal shifts, the set-up involves three couples who share holiday celebrations: Thanksgiving, Christmas, anniversaries.
A significant early upheaval involves Nick (Steve Carell), who’s left his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) for the much younger Ginny (Erika Henningsen), a move that destabilises the group. The new season involves a baby, discussions of potential parenthood between Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), and ongoing tensions between Kate (Fey) and her husband, Jack (Will Forte). There’s also an inspired flashback episode that demonstrates how much spark Carell’s presence adds to the proceedings. Expect snappy dialogue, peppy performances – Domingo and Calvani, in particular, are a treat – eye-candy locations and a knockout punchline.
Your Friends & Neighbours (Apple TV)
Chisel-jawed and classically handsome but capable of conveying an unsettling edginess, Jon Hamm is perfectly cast as Andrew “Coop” Cooper in this darkly comic series about a former financier-turned-thief. In the opening season the divorced father-of-two lost his job, was drowning in debt and was discovering a new vocation. He started robbing his country-club pals, pinching the kind of wildly expensive trinkets – watches, jewellery, pens – that they might not notice are missing.
In season two Coop’s affluent enclave buzzes with the arrival of billionaire Owen Ashe (Paradise’s James Marsden), a widowed single dad with a gimlet eye and a shark-like smile. With its depiction of the rot beneath the swanky surfaces of an upmarket area, the series recalls the sly, droll edge of Desperate Housewives. And, like Succession, it builds episodes around lavish events and blithe displays of wealth: an extravagant housewarming, a luxury yacht cruise, a visit to a Hamptons mansion.
While strategically dropping disruptor Ashe into the mix, the series also deftly develops its core characters alongside themes of ageing, alienation and loneliness. Coop is dealing with back problems; his ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) is struggling with menopause; his former lover Samantha (Olivia Munn) has become a local pariah following events that previously rocked the neighbourhood. It all blends to form a fizzy cocktail flavoured by tangy social satire.
Criminal Record (Apple TV)
There’s a particular pleasure in watching a pair of potent actors going toe-to-toe and that’s one of the attractions of this taut English cop thriller. In the opening season a game of cat-and-mouse played out between Cush Jumbo’s dogged DS June Lenker and Peter Capaldi’s devious DCI Daniel Hegarty. The second season finds them uneasily having to join forces to investigate a murder involving a militant right-wing group and an incendiary online influencer.
Courageous and compassionate but also impulsive and sometimes mistaken in her judgments, June instinctively plays by the book. Hegarty, however, stealthily calculates what needs to be done to achieve the desired outcomes. In a febrile political and social climate simmering with unrest, his Machiavellian approach, involving deals and compromises that June’s loath to contemplate, might be more effective.
The Pitt (HBO Max)
The almost real-time shift at a Pittsburgh emergency department covered by the latest season of this award-winning series begins early on July 4, with Independence Day celebrations likely to send casualties flooding in. As he faces the long day ahead, burned-out department head Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) is preparing for a three-month sabbatical and not necessarily planning to return.
As anticipated, there’s a ceaseless stream of patients requiring care: a wife and mother battling terminal cancer; a diabetic husband and father who can’t afford treatment; a rape victim agonising over whether to report the assault; a pregnant woman committed to a “free birth”. In the midst of this, the trauma centre is forced to “go analog” after a threatened computer hack, and the younger staff members get a rapid introduction to paper files and fax machines.
Robby is again the anchor of this embattled ship, although he’s clearly buckling under the strain. And once again, in a beautifully drawn and cast ensemble, the pressure on the staff is acutely felt as this addictive medical drama maintains its propulsive power.
Beef (Netflix)
Built on anger and resentment, Lee Sung Jin’s deliciously nasty drama cannily employs The White Lotus template: same title and premise for each season but a different cast and plot – basically a new riff on the same theme. With its plush, country-club setting, the second season of Beef also has an additional White Lotus vibe.
Here, too, there are privileged and not terribly likeable people going about their unsavoury business while an underclass of workers watches on, gleaning tips on how to succeed in business and upscale their lives. There’s an abundance of bad behaviour as the drama focuses on irrepressible deal-maker and club manager Josh (Oscar Isaac), his interior-designer wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) and a couple of their impressionable and aspirational employees, Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and her fiance Austin (Charles Melton).
Each gets tangled up in deceptions that spiral out of their control, and all find ways to rationalise their bad behaviour. But, as in the first, awfully compelling season, the drama encourages us to feel flashes of empathy – or at least understanding – for each of the characters in all their messed-up humanity.
What TV show are you loving more with every new season? Let us know in the comments below.
