Entertainment

‘The Tunnel’ Is Taking On The Alt-Right Next Season

by Victoria McNally
Courtesy of © BSkyB Limited / Kudos Film & Television Limited 2013

Do you enjoy shows about terrorism investigations like Homeland and Quantico? Then odds are good that you also dig The Tunnel, an engaging European drama featuring Stephen Dillane (Game Of Thrones) and Clémence Poésy (Harry Potter) as a British and French detective working together to solve a crime across country lines. Although it first started out as a reimagining the the Danish-Swedish crime series The Bridge, the show has since branched out into its own riveting stories, including a plot based on the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight 370 in 2014. Season 2, subtitled Sabotage, recently wrapped up on PBS after first airing a year ago in the U.K. So will The Tunnel return for Season 3 — and more importantly, when will U.S. residents get to finally see it?

First off, worry, not, Tunnel fans: you’re getting more of the show you love, although not that much more. In January 2017, British television channel Sky Atlantic announced that The Tunnel will be renewed for a third and final installment of the series. According to PC Magazine, the next season will be known as The Tunnel: Vengeance, and will be set against a backdrop of 2016’s Brexit vote and the increasing far-right, anti-refugee sentiment growing across the world.

Courtesy of © BSkyB Limited / Kudos Film & Television Limited 2013

But when will that happen? After all, there was a three year period of time between the first season of The Tunnel in 2013 and the second season in 2016, so it's not as if the show has a track record for coming back in a timely fashion. Of course, based on the date of this Guardian article, back then it took Sky two years to announce a second season. This time, Season 3 was announced less than six months after Sabotage finished airing in the U.K., so maybe there’ll be a quicker turnaround. The local news website Kent Live has reported that the series began filming in Dover and Thanet in March 2017, so odds are pretty good that the show will premiere soon — maybe even this fall.

Regardless of when the final third season premieres, though, it seems pretty obvious based on past release dates that Americans will still have to wait about an extra year until PBS picks it up. I guess you can always grab a European region blu-ray player and beg someone across the pond to buy you a copy if you want to see it early!