TV’s most over-qualified comedy cast is set to get a little more over-qualified-er tonight, as Netflix announced that it’s ordered a second season of Greg Daniels and Steve Carell’s Space Force, the show that dared to ask how many absolute ringers—Ben Schwartz, John Malkovich, Tawny Newsome, Lisa Kudrow, Chris Gethard, Aparna Nancherla, Dan Bakkedahl, Jimmy O. Yang, Patrick Warburton, the late Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, jesus—you can throw at a show and still not actually make it as funny or enjoyable as it should be. Per Deadline, the show’s second season will add Parks And Recs and Brooklyn 99 alum Norm Hiscock to the show’s production team, where he’ll serve as co-showrunner with Daniels.
For those unfamiliar with Space Force, it followed Carell as Air Force general Mark Naird, a stiff and by-the-book military man tasked with running a wing of the military tweeted into existence by a wildly ill-informed (if unnamed, in the show) POTUS, while also balancing a surprising amount of family drama with rebellious teen daughter Erin (Diana Silvers) and incarcerated spouse Maggie (Kudrow). The show drew much of its comedy in the first season from the rigidity of Carell’s Naird in the face of challenges from folks like the program’s head scientist (a delightfully dry Malkovich) or its vapidly cheerful social media manager (Schwartz, doing his damnedest to get this rock up the hill through sheer energy and charisma alone). The trouble was that the show never actually seemed to settle on whether Space Force was a genuinely good idea or not; it occasionally showed signs of being a truly mean-spirited, potentially brilliant satire, but was just as likely to pull the punch for a feel-good “Good people doing good work” conclusion.
All of which may or may not continue in the show’s second season; clearly, though enough people tuned into the first to make Netflix’s decision to pull the trigger on a second outing make some kind of logical sense.