Is there going to be a Death Valley season 2?

Death Valley is a comedy-drama starring Timothy Spall as John Chapel, a retired actor turned detective.

John made his name as a fictional detective in the hit series Caesar, but is now living a quiet life in Wales. That is, until real cop and huge Caesar fan DS Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) knocks on John's door and asks for his help to crack a murder.

The opening episode drew an overnight audience of 2.9 million viewers, beating David Mitchell's hit show Ludwig, achieving the highest rating for a new BBC scripted comedy in five years. When you add in all the people also watching on BBC iPlayer, Death Valley has managed a really big audience.

So, thoughts are now turning to the future of the show…

Will there be a Death Valley season 2

Reportedly yes! TV Zone has said that filming on the second series will begin in Wales in September 2025. So we'd therefore expect the new series to go out in spring 2026.

We must add that this is yet to be officially confirmed by the BBC, but the high ratings suggest that it's very likely to be returning. It might be a while before the BBC officially confirms the news. It took them a few months before confirming that the Death in Paradise spin-off off Return to Paradise will be back for a second run.

Where will the plot go? Spoilers if you’ve not seen all of season 1!

Well, the first series saw Janie often worry that she would get the sack from her boss, DCI Clarke (the brilliant Steffan Rhodri), for getting John's help. However, John has now been taken on as a consultant to the team, so she won't have to worry about that.

We'd expect season 2 to explore John's relationship with Janie's mum! It was revealed at the end of Death Valley season 1 that the pair had started dating, which Janie wasn’t too impressed about. Janie's mum, Yvonne (Melanie Walters), is a great character and we’d expect to see more of her.

Hopefully, we also might get to see a bit more of Tony the desk sergeant (Mike Bubbins) and Janie's pathologist pal Baxter (Alexandria Riley), who wasn't given a huge amount to do in the first series. Might we also see some romance for Janie? The first series had some great guest stars, including Car Share's Sian Gibson and Ghosts actor Kiell Smith-Bynoe, so we’d expect more top names for season 2.

Hopefully, we will also see more of another Ghosts actor, Jim Howick. He popped up very briefly in the first series as Constable Atkins in John's TV show Caesar.

Interestingly, producer Nikki Wilson told us how they shot the Caesar scenes for the first series. "We filmed all of the Caesar footage in one day at the Museum of Welsh Life," says Nikki. "Although Caesar is set in the 1950s, we’ve always said it aired in the late 1990s and early 2000s, so it needed to be period-correct for both eras! We actually used different camera lenses for it — the rest of the show was filmed on anamorphic lenses, but we used spherical ones, which were the norm in the early 2000s."

The first series of Death Valley is being shown on Sunday nights on BBC One, and you can watch the whole series as a box set on BBC iPlayer. Please see our best BBC dramas guide for more recommendations.

US fans can enjoy Death Valley on BritBox.