Okay, I’m thrilled to tune into the second season of “Prodigal Son” after an incredibly compelling and dark first season.
The series is helmed by Tom Payne, who fans will remember from “The Walking Dead”.
Introduced as Malcolm Bright, he changed his surname after his serial killer father Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen) aka The Surgeon was arrested for murder when he was a little boy.
A disgraced former FBI profiler, Malcolm is now working with the NYPD.
He has this unique ability to get into the psyche of a killer.
In fact, he’s so great at it that it becomes a concern over whether he’s more of his father’s son than he would like to admit.
He shares a close relationship with Gil Arroyo (Lou Diamond Phillips), a lieutenant with Major Crimes, who has been a father figure to Malcolm since his father’s incarceration.
The story comes full circle as Malcolm, plagued by violent nightmares, is forced to visit his estranged father to close a copycat killer case.
This doesn’t sit well with his affluent, mollycoddling mother, Jessica (Bellamy Young).
Meanwhile, his sister Ainsley (Halston Sage), an intrepid news reporter, becomes entangled in the case, too.
The second season picks up from the aftermath of Nicholas Endicott’s death. Martin is back at Claremont Psychiatric Hospital as a reward for assisting on the case.
And that’s where Catherine Zeta-Jones comes in. The celebrated Hollywood actress, who has accumulated a flattering collection of prestigious awards, plays Dr Vivian Capshaw, the new resident medical doctor.
On being cast in the series, Zeta-Jones admitted: “Well, I was a fan of the show and I gravitate to the kind of nuance of what I think was so different and powerful about ‘Prodigal Son’.
“It's a pretty good family drama with a twist of danger and, you know, kind of...it's a dark family and I gravitate to, kind of, darker material.
“Also, with Michael Sheen, who is literally from my hometown, who I've never met before, I've admired from a distance. We actually have childhood friends that went to school, and we were part of the Dylan Thomas Theatre and Dance. But he did theatre.
“And I was in contemporary dance and I was doing amateur dramatics at the Catholic church and he was doing it somewhere else.
“And, so, I left Wales expecting to go to the theatre in London.
“And so even though we are the same age and we have all of these mutual friends, we've never crossed. So that was, of course, a huge pull for me.”
Peeling back the layers of her character, she added: “When I read the draft of the script, it drew me in. It pulled me in.
“This character was exciting. I didn't know where I was going to go with it, but I knew that there was a fundamental interest, intrigue, and that this doctor should have surely known who The Surgeon was, admired him from afar and now she's sequestered in the bowels of this facility with that very person.”
Payne was thrilled to be working alongside Zeta-Jones, too.
“I was super excited that someone like Catherine would want to join our little gang, really.
“I often get so overwhelmed by everything that happens on this show that it's difficult for me to sit back and see it as the entertainment that it is.
“And it's just so fun when we have these fun, flashy characters come in and join us like Alan Cumming's character who came in.
“And then, Catherine, she's come in to join us for a much longer stint.”
In the new season, the team are roped into several gruesome cases, kicking off with a woman decapitated by a guillotine while her boyfriend is bricked inside a room alive.
With Gil still recovering from injuries sustained at the end of season one, Malcolm works closely with detective JT (Frank Harts).
However, he is still wracked with guilt over aiding in the disposal of Endicott’s body.
Once again, Martin’s mind games impact the lives of several individuals, including Vivian. That’s definitely part of the intrigue of the series.
“Prodigal Son” season 2 airs on M-Net (DStv channel 101) on Wednesday at 9.30pm.
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