‘Fantastically dreadful’ BBC thriller that critics hated gets second season

The BBC train thriller that didn’t cut the mustard for critics has now been renewed for a second season.

At the time of its release in 2024, it was compared to hit drama series The Bodyguard by fans.

Sadly it got derailed on its way to becoming as critically acclaimed.

Nightsleeper, starring Alexandra Roach, Joe Cole and Sharon Small, wasn’t a hit with viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, who gave it a score of 42 per cent – and a number of critics were similarly disappointed.

Both The Radio Times and The Guardian gave the series two stars, with the latter calling it ‘fantastically dreadful’.

Others, like Gerard Gilbert at The i Paper enjoyed it considerably more, and he clearly wasn’t alone. It was the BBC’s biggest new drama launch of that year, drawing in 8.5million viewers for the first episode.

While the first season followed a group of passengers on a sleeper train from Glasgow to London that had been hijacked by hackers, the second season will move off-land and into the ocean.

That’s right, the plot is moving on board a ship as they sail across the Irish Sea. ‘Behind every cabin door is another story, another surprise,’ says the broadcaster.

Series writer Nick Leather exclaimed: ‘It’s so exciting to set sail on season two! The passengers and crew on tonight’s Belfast to Liverpool passenger ferry are about to experience six hours of non-stop thrills and spills, secrets and lies, triumphs and tragedies.

‘None of them are quite as they seem. Nothing in their lives will ever be the same again. Not all of them will make it to the other side. The new Nightsleeper is going to be more nightsleepery than ever…’

In recent years, tales of cruises gone wrong have made headlines in the press – no doubt this boat ride will also be full of twists and turns and not quite the plain sail that passengers will have been expecting.

A sneak peek at the script for the first episode of the new season shows the title ‘Belfast Lough’ – it’s an area of the North Channel that connects the Irish Sea with the Atlantic Ocean and presumably where the boat will start its journey.

Executive Producer Kate Harwood declared about the new instalment: ‘Audiences embraced Nightsleeper in such a huge way, and we’re incredibly excited to return with a bold new story.

‘Nick has once again created a brilliantly tense thriller packed with new characters, twists, emotion and edge-of-your-seat drama. We can’t wait to bring this new drama from the high seas.’

We don’t yet know when the second season will hit our screens, but the Beeb has confirmed that filming will take place in Belfast later this year.

Nightsleeper season 1 is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.