Don’t Miss This Twisted Thriller, Now On BBC iPlayer

When I stumbled across Ragdoll on BBC iPlayer a fortnight ago, I thought it must have simply passed me by when it premiered four years ago. But how? Incredibly twisted, tense and starring stellar performances from Henry Lloyd-Hughes (soon to star in The Thursday Murder Club) and Thalissa Teixeira as complicated best friends DS Nathan Rose and DI Emily Baxter along with Lucy Hale as determined DC Lake Edmunds, it is a gripping stand-out series that’s surely worthy of some television awards. Instead, it debuted quietly on AMC in the US and Alibi in the UK – and despite its 90 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, never garnered serious numbers.

Also airing the likes of Gangs of London, This Is Going To Hurt and The Night Manager in recent years, American broadcaster AMC is no stranger to a British drama. Alibi meanwhile is part of UKTV, and while it usually shows reruns of the BBC and ITV’s best-loved crime dramas from recent years, it also has a slate of original programming. Owned by BBC Studios, most recently this includes the likes of Mark Gatiss’ Bookish, Mudtown, I, Jack Wright and Annika. And because of that BBC connection, some of these shows eventually make their way onto the BBC’s television channels and streaming platform iPlayer. This is the case with Annika, which is currently topping the iPlayer charts – and it is also what has happened with Ragdoll.

DS Nathan Rose (HENRY LLOYD-HUGES), DI Emily Baxter (THALISSA TEIXEIRA), DC Lake Edmunds (LUCY HALE). (© Nadav Kander/BBCS/UKTV/AMC)

Darkly witty and incredibly twisted, Ragdoll opens with DS Nathan Rose on trial, accused of illegally obtaining evidence against vicious serial killer Mark Hooper – aka the Cremation Killer, notorious for setting his victims alight. With Rose’s evidence deemed illegitimate, the case against Hooper falls apart and the smirking killer is cleared of all charges. Tormented by the murderer’s callous crimes and aloofness, before Hooper can walk free Rose leaps across the courtroom, tackles the killer and beats him on the ground before security guards can intervene and drag him away.

Two years on, Rose has returned to work after a stay on a psychiatric ward and extensive therapy for PTSD. Now his good friend and colleague DI Emily Baxter is in charge of the unit, taking over the post from Rose. Both attend a gruesome crime scene in a central London flat: a grotesque patchwork corpse made up of six dismembered victims sewn together is suspended from a ceiling. The head is that of Hooper, while a finger ominously points directly at Rose’s flat through the window.

Thus begins the Ragdoll investigation – and it quickly gets even more complicated. Back at the station Rose receives a mysterious envelope containing a list of six names, a hit list for the Ragdoll killer. The last name on the list is DS Rose himself.

DS Nathan Rose (HENRY LLOYD-HUGES), DC Lake Edmunds (LUCY HALE), Finlay (MICHAEL SMILEY), DI Emily Baxter (THALISSA TEIXEIRA) in Ragdoll. (© Luke Varley/AMC)

Described as ‘a wicked Killing Eve-style thriller’ by The Guardian, across six episodes, Ragdoll splices an intense investigation with mysterious flashbacks across two years of Rose’s mental instability, and Ragdoll paints a complicated portrait of an adept copper under intense mental strain who every episode seems to be more involved in creating the tangled murder plot he himself seems to be the final victim of.

Starring Michael Smiley, Ali Cook, Natasha Little and Samantha Spiro in supporting roles, it’s a must watch. And if you are anything like us, you’ll be left with one key question: will there be a second season of Ragdoll? Here’s what we know.

Lake Edmunds (LUCY HALE) in Ragdoll. (© Natalie Seery/AMC)

Ragdoll Season 2: Everything We Know So Far

There’s no clear answer regarding the future of Ragdoll. On the one hand, the six-part thriller was marketed as a limited series and as of 2025 there’s still no sequel to the 2021 debut. That said, dubbing something as a limited series has never stopped broadcasters renewing something successful, and it seems Ragdoll season 2 was in the works – at some point.

Filmed in London in spring 2021, the first season of Ragdoll was written by Freddy Syborn, based on the 2017 novel by Daniel Cole (with some name changes). Toby MacDonald and Niall McCormick directed the six episodes, with production company Sid Gentle Films (the team behind Killing Eve and Extraordinary) bringing everything together.

While there has been no public movement on Ragdoll season 2, it seems a writer’s room was formed with emerging writer Awate Abdalla part of proceedings – though no news on where it went. If Ragdoll season 2 does get the greenlight, there are two strands it could explore. At the end of season 1, we see Joy (Spiro) push Massey (Sam Troughton) over a railing in King’s Cross station, killing him instantly, prompting questions as to whether she was the real Faust after all – a puppet master controlling Massey with a longer history of killing those she is called to injure. Rose meanwhile is still on the run, and we see a closing scene featuring the copper playing pool in Hamburg. And that season 1 finale launched a whole host of questions about Lake Edmunds, who seems to have a shady past in the US she is struggling to outrun. In short, Ragdoll season 2 would have plenty of strands to pick back up and run with.

DS Nathan Rose (HENRY LLOYD-HUGHES) & DI Emily Baxter (THALISSA TEIXEIRA) in Ragdoll. (© Luke Varley/AMC)

On the other hand, Ragdoll season 2 could follow the path tread by author Cole who has penned three novels in his Fawkes and Baxter series, the first being Ragdoll. (In the books, DS Nathan Rose is called William Fawkes.) The second book, Hangman (2018), centres on a new twisted case that DCI Emily Baxter has to untangle: a body is found hanging from Brooklyn Bridge, with ‘BAIT’ carved into the chest; in London, a second body is found, this time branded with the word ‘PUPPET’. And book three, Endgame (2019), brings the Fawkes-Baxter-Edmunds trio back together when retired police officer Finley Shaw is found dead in a locked room.

All of this is to say there’s plenty of material should Ragdoll prove popular with new audiences after being launched on BBC iPlayer. Now we just need to wait to see what UKTV has to say on the matter…

WATCH

Ragdoll is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and on U.