Avenue 5 will be back for a second season, but we’ll be waiting a while…

HBO has given Avenue 5 the green light for season 2, but pre-production work has ground to a halt during the coronavirus outbreak.

The sci-fi series, created by Armando Iannucci and starring Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad and Lenora Crichlow among others, follows the passengers and crew of a galaxy-trotting cruise ship as it loses its way, turning a quick holiday in the stars into a gruelling affair as everyone starts to realise they’ll be trapped together for a long time.

“We’ve mapped out the first six episodes [of season 2] and the final three we’ll probably map out next month,” Iannucci confirmed to THR. “But it’s basically about people in isolation. So, we’re just waiting to see what the mood might be as to how we pitch. Is it going to be bleak despair, or is it going to be very very silly? Or maybe silly despair? I don’t know. We tried to make season one as silly as possible, but it seems to have strangely become a kind of documentary about present day conditions.”

Iannucci says the current climate is already changing the way the Avenue 5 team have gone about planning the second season:

“Its been good to try and think of things that make you laugh and make everyone else laugh. I think the hardest bit, though, is the open-ended nature now and because I’m so used to working to a deadline, we’re inventing deadlines. So, that that’s been the hardest bit – adjusting to that kind of uncertainty, and not knowing the environment in which it is then going to be made and broadcast. It’s a challenge. It’s an interesting challenge.”

More on season 2 as we get it.