After the Flood season two

Taking place a year after the first season’s explosive finale, the second run of After the Flood returns with an air of weary familiarity. The floodwaters may have long since drained away, but the damage – emotional, institutional, moral – remains deeply ingrained in the town. Jo Marshall (Sophie Rundle) is now a new mother, co-parenting her baby daughter with Pat (Matt Stokoe), a shift that adds a layer of sleep-deprived strain to an already punishing professional life. Motherhood has only hardened Jo, sharpening her sense of what is at stake. Rundle handles this balancing act with impressive restraint, grounding the drama even when the writing briefly falters.

The series wastes little time in reasserting its procedural comfort zone. The opening case – a body discovered on the nearby moors – mirrors the structure and pacing of the first season’s pilot with near-surgical precision. At first glance, this familiarity feels faintly troubling, but the repetition reads less as laziness than as a deliberate act of self-definition.

That identity remains anchored to Jo’s long-running pursuit of Sergeant Phil Mackie (Nicholas Gleaves), whose insidious influence continues to poison the town’s institutions. Gleaves is, once again, exceptional. His Mackie is never overtly theatrical; menace seeps out through the tiniest gestures – a raised eyebrow, a tight-lipped smile, a carefully timed pause. It is a chillingly restrained performance, and the series is at its most compelling whenever he is present.

Elsewhere, the season gestures towards broader, more contemporary concerns. There are hints of environmental devastation driven by corporate greed, and of the more aggressive forms of activism that have emerged in response. In a drama rooted in the aftermath of ecological catastrophe, these themes feel not just relevant but necessary. Yet they remain frustratingly superficial, introduced only to be sidelined, never allowed to disrupt the procedural order or meaningfully deepen the story being told.

Ultimately, season two of After the Flood is a confident, consistent continuation of a classical procedural. It remains watchable, often gripping, and led by performances that elevate familiar material. But for a drama circling such urgent contemporary issues, it feels oddly content to skim the surface, when it might have risked plunging deeper.