Nightsleeper is trading its hijacked overnight train for a hijacked ferry. The BBC’s real-time thriller has cast Colin Morgan, Madeleine Mantock and Christian Cooke to lead its second series, which relocates the action to a Belfast-to-Liverpool passenger crossing under threat from a cyberattack. Filming is already underway in Belfast.
The first season, which aired in 2024, centered on a Glasgow-to-London sleeper train hijacked by hackers, with Joe Cole and Alexandra Roach playing strangers forced to work together to save the passengers. The new six-episode run swaps the setting for a ferry, where the crew tries to conceal the scale of a hacking threat from those on board. Cooke plays Johnny, the ferry’s second engineer, who partners with Morgan’s character, Stephen “Bo” Bowen, the newly appointed technical director at the National Cyber Security Centre, to stop the attack before it turns deadly. Mantock plays Beth.
The supporting cast draws on a mix of returning and new faces. Rupert Penry-Jones, Ian McElhinney and Sally Lindsay join as Richard, Charlie and Lisa, respectively, while Parth Thakerar, Jonjo O’Neill and Micah Balfour reprise their first-season roles as National Cyber Security Centre officers Saj, Hud and Leon. Nick Leather returns as writer, with James Kent and Chris Baugh directing. Element Pictures, the Fremantle-owned company behind Normal People, produces, with support from Northern Ireland Screen.
Lindsay Salt, the BBC’s director of drama, said Leather had delivered another gripping script, with tension building steadily as the story unfolds. Executive producer Kate Harwood, who oversaw the first season, said the production was glad to be shooting the nautical follow-up in Belfast, calling the city fitting territory given its shipbuilding history. Nightsleeper Season 2 will stream on BBC iPlayer and air on BBC One, though a premiere date has not yet been announced.
