The Offenders renewed ahead of first season release

Stephen Merchant’s The Offenders will have a second season

While networks are canceling and “unrenewing” TV shows due to the pandemic, Amazon and the BBC are doing something different. Stephen Merchant’s The Offenders is getting a second season.

The first season hasn’t even premiered yet. In fact, it hasn’t even filmed yet. It was just 12 days into filming its first season when the pandemic started and production had to shut down. That could have been disastrous for some TV shows, but not for The Offenders.

Instead of canceling the show, Amazon and the BBC have decided to renew the show. The two seasons will film back-to-back, meaning that there will be a short break between the two seasons. Think of it a little like Snowpiercer on TNT, which had a long delay in just getting the first season but the second season had already started filming when the first season premiered.

With an early renewal, storylines from Season 1 can be made much stronger than they were. There’s the guarantee of six more episodes, allowing for the writers to know where the characters are going then. The storylines in Season 1 can be reworked or deepened to allow for that.

When can we expect The Offenders to premiere?

The great news is filming has started back up. It began late in 2020 in Briston, England, and it’s expected to go on until October 2021, according to Deadline.

That would usually mean a 2022 start, but it’s worth noting that the year-long filming is for both seasons.

There’s a chance that the first six episodes will go through post-production in early 2021, allowing for a summer or maybe fall release date for the episodes. Filming can continue on Season 2, allowing that to be released sometime in 2022.

Amazon and BBC haven’t committed to anything just yet.

Filming is working a little differently to normal. Christopher Walken isn’t available to film his scenes until March 2021, so the production schedule has had to adapt to allow for that rather than recasting.

Stay tuned for the latest updates on The Offenders and more on Amazon Prime Video.