The second season of the critically acclaimed dramatic series The Missing has begun filming with The Walking Dead‘s David Morrissey and The Casual Vacancy‘s Keeley Hawes joining the series in key roles. Tchéky Karyo returns as detective Julien Baptiste. The cast also includes Roger Allam, Laura Fraser, Anastasia Hille, Lia Williams, Abigail Hardingham, Jake Davies, Florian Bartholomäi, and Daniel Ezra.

Season two of BBC One and Starz’ The Missing will consist of eight episodes. Harry and Jack Williams are back as writers and Ben Chanan (The Last Kingdom) is directing all eight episodes.

“While we were writing the first series, we began talking about what the show would have been had Oliver Hughes been found. This story grew out of that discussion,” said writers Harry and Jack Williams. “It’s the other side of the coin to series one – an exploration of loss, of freedom, of how the past can shape the present in myriad ways that we cannot fully understand. It’s bigger, more ambitious, and we’re delighted to have such a brilliantly talented cast joining Julien Baptiste for a new case.”

Willow Grylls, Executive Producer for New Pictures, stated: “I am so proud to have such a high calibre of cast attached to this project and, with the genius of Harry and Jack Williams’ scripts, I know the audience will be gripped to this series just as much as they were to the first. And the beloved Julien Baptiste is back! I am also thrilled to have the wonderful Ben Chanan as director leading the charge, telling the story as it twists and turns over two time frames. The Missing series two will be just as thrilling, heart-wrenching and character driven as you’d hope it to be.”

“The talented Williams brothers take us on a thrilling journey in this next installment with a new story, characters and locations that ultimately explores what happens when the missing child you’ve been searching for comes home. We are thrilled to continue this limited series and collaboration with the BBC, New Pictures and Playground,” added Starz Managing Director Carmi Zlotnik.

The Missing Season Two Plot:

The series follows Sam and Gemma, played by David Morrissey and Keeley Hawes, whose daughter Alice went missing in 2003. In 2014, a young British woman stumbles through the streets of her German hometown and collapses. Her name is Alice Webster, played by newcomer Abigail Hardingham (Nina Forever), and she has been missing for 11 years. Alice’s return sends shockwaves through the small community. Told in dual timelines, flitting between 2014 and the present day, we follow Alice’s family as they are thrown back into a turmoil that threatens to tear them apart at the seams. When French missing person’s detective Julien Baptiste races across Europe to pursue a 12-year-old case that he never let die, we begin to explore the murky morality and emotional complexity of what happens when the missing child you’ve been longing to return actually comes back.