Bodyguard season 2 renewal: A look inside the mysterious holding pattern
Is it common practice for shows to sometimes take months to be renewed by a network? Absolutely so, but Bodyguard is far from your ordinary show. This is one that took much of the United Kingdom by storm; it’s one of their most-watched shows in a general, and it’s certainly found an impressive second life for itself globally on Netflix. Richard Madden was a star before this show ever came out tanks to his time on Game of Thrones; now, he’s on another level. To use a rather nerdy analogy, he’s going from the stratosphere and to the exosphere, which is one step away from outer space! Madden received a Golden Globe for playing David Budd and there’s tremendous enthusiasm from viewers to get more of the series. We’d go so far as to call the anticipation a frenzy!
So what in the world are the BBC and Netflix waiting for? We wanted to hand down a few theories here, mostly to ease those concerned that there will be no more Bodyguard. We feel fairly confident that there will be, largely because it’s too great a show to ignore and it’s the perfect home base for Madden as an actor. Like Benedict Cumberbatch did with Sherlock for many years, he can work on a season of this show, go do a couple of movies, and then come back. It keeps him in the headlines and allows him to do other stuff.
Theory 1 – They’re waiting on the right story idea and this is a reasonable assumption. Creator Jed Mercurio has been entrenched in Line of Duty as of late, and it makes sense to hold off on more Bodyguard until he’s on the other side of getting that finalized. (The fifth season of Line of Duty will be coming up soon — rejoice!) It’s possible that Mercurio already has a great idea, but the BBC wants to wait to announce a renewal until either they’ve seen all of the scripts or they are close to starting production.
Theory 2 – There are financial discussions that need to be had. When a show is as successful and popular as Bodyguard was in season 1, everyone deserves a nice slice of the pie. Figuring out the budgets is something that does take some time, though we’ll be the first to tell you that this is the most unexciting reason for a delay in renewal possible.
Theory 3 – They are waiting for Madden’s schedule to line up. As we’ve said, Richard is a busy man these days who’s been working on a lot of stuff! If you’re the BBC, it doesn’t make too much sense to announce a renewal a long time before shooting begins, which would be a long time before the show actually airs! Promoting television is like a marathon — everything has to be perfectly paced. If you announce the renewal too far in advance, it gives you less to announce closer to things actually happening and maybe people forget and move on to other shows. You want to speed up the promotion at just the right time, giving you a great spring leading up the eventual premiere date.
When could Bodyguard season 2 feasibly premiere?
Unless Mercurio, Madden, and the rest of the team are secretly off in an underground bunker already working on the show, it’s probably not happening this year. 2020 is the earliest we expect it, and if season 2 is anything like season 1, it’s going to be well worth the wait.
One final thing to remember
The interest in season 2 is there. We’ve heard most of the key players say this, though Madden has also questioned how effective David Budd would be as a PPO now that he is a known name due to what happened with Julia Montague.
How eager are you for a season 2 renewal?
Be sure to share now in the comments. (Photo: BBC.)