Apple TV+ orders a second season of Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Surface

The thriller, from creator Veronica West, will take Mbatha-Raw's amnesiac protagonist Sophie back to her hometown of London for its second season

By William Hughes  |  December 3, 2022 | 3:49am
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Apple TV+ orders a second season of Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Surface
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Gugu Mbatha-Raw appears near a surface in Surface Photo: Apple TV+

Amnesia thriller Surface is getting a second season at Apple TV+, with THR reporting that the mystery show—in which Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Sophie, a woman who survives a suicide attempt but develops severe amnesia in the aftermath—has gotten an order for a second run of episodes.

Surface was created by Veronica West, whose previous credits included Hulu’s short-lived High Fidelity TV adaptation, which she developed, and which lasted a single season on the streamer. She serves as the showrunner on Surface, executive producing on the series alongside Mbatha-Raw, frequent episode director Sam Miller, Lauren Neustatder, and Apple’s personal TV-producing powerhouse, Reese Witherspoon.

Although plot details about Surface’s second season are, obviously, light at the moment, Apple did reveal one major detail about the upcoming arc: The series will shift its setting from San Francisco to London, Sophie’s hometown, as she continues to face the various problems that she’s forgotten to remember that she has.

As it happens, we weren’t especially hot on Surface, despite Mbatha-Raw’s considerable talents adding a bit of heft to its psychological thriller shenanigans. In her C- review of the show’s first season, The A.V. Club’s Saloni Gajjar wrote scathingly that,

The final product is a massively disappointing slow burn. The crawling pace would’ve been worthwhile if the show knew where to take its suspense, but Surface offers neither eroticism nor an edge-of-the-seat mystery. The story instead branches off into ridiculous subplots, including an unnecessary girls’ trip and an embezzlement scheme. There’s sporadic focus on Sophie’s life pre-marriage that is ultimately used to set up a (possible) second season. But why is that more important than wisely fleshing out the first one?

Surface aired its first season back in July, wrapping up in September of this year.

 
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