Issue #5: Writers Season 2 at Ten - Reflections on a Sequel
- Feb 6
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 7
Sequels are hard. There is a natural concern that, even with the best of intentions, you will never be able to recapture the magic of the original - and while some follow-ups do manage that rare feat of successfully building on the groundwork of their predecessors, or sometimes even surpassing them, most are at best underwhelming, or worse, disappointing.
Back in the summer of 2014, I was headed for university in Newport, Wales, and wanted to do some real hands-on filmmaking before I got there. I decided to develop a web series expanding on the short film I had made as my graduation project for college only a month prior; I quickly wrote some scripts, expanded the short film’s cast of two actors to six series leads, and began filming that July. Shooting consumed the entirety of that summer, then continued through the rest of the year and into the following spring as I divided my time between my studies in Wales and our set back in Bristol.
The result was Writers, a comedy-drama series of six episodes (seven if you include the original short; eight if you count the two parts of the third episode separately) that followed the lives of four aspiring writers, an aspiring illustrator, and their eccentric agent. The project provided myself and the cast an invaluable opportunity to cut our teeth as filmmakers and performers respectively, giving us the chance to learn more about our crafts through practice over study; and while Writers never reached the same into-the-millions viewership as other contemporary YouTube series like Video Game High School (not helped by my use of licensed music, which resulted in some episodes being blocked in certain territories), we received a positive response and even managed to become something of a local success story - shortly after its release on YouTube, the series was broadcast on national television across the MADE network (now known as Local TV). I was even invited to write an article for the Watershed Cinema's Rife Magazine, where I talked about the journey of bringing the series to the screen.
As the dust settled, the question of a second season naturally arose. What would it look like? Where would it go? Was there anything more to say about these characters?
In reality, when developing the series, I had outlined a three season story for Writers. The first would be a light-hearted introduction to the characters, bringing them together and establishing their core relationships; the second would be a more emotional journey that tested these bonds and forced the characters to mature towards adulthood; and the third would serve as a bittersweet conclusion to the series, with the characters moving onto the next chapter of their lives.
With the benefit of hindsight, this roadmap was flawed; it meant that the second season would have to carry the burden of being the dark middle chapter of the story, caught between the sitcom aesthetic of its predecessor and the subdued comedy of its planned follow-up. To prevent Season Two from slipping into total melancholy would require delicate writing capable of sustaining the balancing act between comedy and drama - a balancing act that nineteen-year-old me was not yet equipped for.
After a considerably lengthier writing process than I had allowed myself on the first season, production for Season Two began in the spring of 2015. Where the first season had been six thirty-minute episodes, the second would be seven, with some scripts as long as an hour. It was wildly ambitious, not just in terms of scale but also scope: outside of Jess and Emmett's will-they-won’t-they love story, the first season had no real overarching narrative, whereas Season Two would juggle three major story arcs along with flashforwards to the events of Season Three; and where the first season had only one recurring character in Liz Stewart’s Clarice Sparrow, the second had two in Joseph Dowling’s Parker James III and Tom Turner’s Patrick Spencer. On the same budget as season one - that is to say, none whatsoever - filming took place in Bristol as I continued to divide my limited free time between England and Wales. Meanwhile, the cast were themselves increasingly busy as they prepared to head to universities all across the country, sacrificing what precious spare time they had left over to come and make filming possible. Looking back on it now, the whole thing was a frankly insane undertaking, and it’s a miracle that any episodes were completed at all.
Sadly, our insane undertaking proved to be just that. A difficult production meant that only five of the planned seven episodes were ever finished. The two-part season finale Daisy’s Choice was partially shot but never completed: these episodes would have intercut Daisy and Barney’s long-awaited journey to Bournemouth with extended flashbacks exploring the first time they met (previously alluded to in the season one finale, A Tale of Two Scarves). Compared with the sombre tone of the de-facto finale We Need to Talk About Jess, these episodes would have balanced the season’s relentless melancholy with a hopeful look toward the future, finally resolving the mystery of those recurring matrimonial flashforwards and paving the way for a more tonally-balanced Season Three.
Season Two debuted in February 2016, less than a year after Season One concluded. Despite a strong start with the season premiere, the response was never quite as strong as the previous season and the viewership gradually declined over the remainder of its run. The aformentioned behind-the-scenes issues meant that the fourth episode, Father’s Day, had to be split into two parts before the season abruptly went on a fifteen month hiatus as we scrambled to finish the remaining episodes. We Need to Talk About Jess was later reworked and released in 2017 as a one-off special to provide a conclusion to the season, with a major recut working around the significant scenes that had not been filmed and minor pick-ups shot to bridge the remaining gaps - these scenes would ultimately be the last scenes ever shot for Writers. A short trailer after the episode’s credits promised the release of Daisy’s Choice as a series finale retitled The Final Chapter, but this would never materialise. We all simply got too busy, and in time we moved on. For a season that was about the unexpected curveballs that life throws at you, it is ironic that life itself ultimately got in the way of the series being completed.
I have spent a long time - ten years, I suppose - thinking back on Writers Season Two with a certain amount of regret. To quote George Lucas after he finished watching The Phantom Menace for the first time: “I may have gone too far in a few places”. The second season was the complete opposite of the first in almost every conceivable way. Although Season One’s rushed writing period meant that it was messy and unfocused - ideas like Jess’ struggles with writer’s block were introduced in early episodes only to be completely forgotten about - but it at least never forgot to allow its characters, and therefore its audience, to have fun with its off-beat humour and colourful characters. Season Two was a more confident and self-assured experience, but it was bogged down by its tonal shift toward teen soap opera, sacrificing character and levity for the sake of laying groundwork for a third season that would ultimately never be produced. No better is all of this exemplified than in the death of Jess’ father Patrick Spencer, a character introduced to the audience only a few episodes prior, in what was intended to be an attempt at exploring the characters’ reactions to loss and grief. The twist ending to Father's Day instead felt like a cheap kick in the nuts, becoming the breaking point for an overstuffed season already struggling with its own identity.
Yet while rewatching the season all these years later in preparation for writing this blog, I found myself with far more positive things to say about Season Two than I had expected, and there is a lot here that I remain extremely proud of. A surprising amount of thought was given to its story and to its themes of change, and the cinematography took a significant step-up from the previous year. The season also contains many of our strongest episodes - Breakfast at Daisy’s is the most "Season One" of the episodes, with a unique real-time bottle-episode concept and some of the funniest moments of the series (Emmett’s unforgivable misogyny notwithstanding); Jenny’s Version takes a one-dimensional side character from the previous season and makes her the beating heart of a thirty minute character study anchored by dedicated performances from Grace Martinson, Isabella Cosh, and Joseph Dowling; and We Need to Talk About Jess, despite being hampered by its post-production rejigging, still manages to deliver some of the strongest character work of the series, cleanly wrapping up the Jenny-Parker storyline and delivering an acting showcase for Leah Sperring and Jordan Cottle in its final bathroom scene. Even some of the melancholy that would often derail the series’ momentum provided necessary character growth - Daisy and Barney’s decision to leave their friends behind in order for Barney to go to University halfway across the country was never going to end well, especially for Daisy, and Jenny grappling with her unrequited love for Emmett was an interesting inversion of what had merely been a running gag in Season One. In retrospect, Season Two was a season of opposites, with its unfortunate lows and remarkable highs in stark contrast to one another, and it remains a tragedy that it never got the proper conclusion that it deserved.
As I said at the beginning, sequels are hard - but just like any creative endeavour, they are ultimately representative of the environment in which they were created. Writers Season One was developed over an exceptionally warm summer before I moved away from home for the first time, where anything seemed possible and the future felt limitless; Writers Season Two was written over a particularly grey winter in the midst of a difficult period in my life - one that would go on to inspire my debut feature film, Electric Silence, which itself would have been impossible to do had I not stumbled my way through making Writers first. Even now, as I turn my attention to creating a new web series (one that will also have to manage a simillar balancing act between comedy and dramatic moments so dark they will make this season look like sunshine and rainbows) I find myself thinking back to the production of Writers for guidance, learning from both its failures and its successes. For a series that began on such a high note and ended in such bittersweet fashion, it somehow remains a huge influence on my filmmaking. Perhaps it always will.
Will there ever be a third season of Writers? No. Will we ever see any of these characters again? Unlikely, but never say never - I would work with any of that cast again in a heartbeat. But one thing I can say for certain is that, wherever my filmmaking journey takes me from here, it started right here; with Jess, Emmett, Daisy, Barney, Hugh, Jenny, Clarice, Chauncey, Jo, Parker and Patrick; and with Leah, David, Isabella, Jack, Jordan, Grace, Liz, Ben, Emily, Joe and Tom.
In the meantime..."Play it again, Sam..."
- A.T.C.
February 2026
All episodes of Writers: The Complete Series are available to stream on the official Volplex YouTube channel. You can also follow Volplex Pictures on Instagram for further updates.
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