This Fascinating New Netflix Docuseries Already Has A Great Second Season Planned

While Flint, Michigan may not be in the news as much as it was in 2016, the situation in ailing the city has not been totally solved. Flint, Michigan has not had clean water since 2014, but that is only one of many problems plaguing Flint that the Netflix series Flint Town focuses on. The problems examined in the series are as present in 2018 as they were four years ago, but will Flint Town return for Season 2 to further cover these issues?

UPDATE: Cinemablend reports that Flint Town was cancelled after Season 1.

The show follows the police officers of Flint as they respond to calls, make arrests, and deal with budget cuts as they try to serve a population of 100,000 with only 98 officers. Flint Town states that this is "the lowest number of officers for any comparable city," and the series shows the toll that this takes on both the police and the citizens of Flint.

The eight episodes offer a comprehensive look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Flint police department, but the filmmakers still believe there is far more to say about Flint, MI. Director Zackary Canepari tells Bustle, "We [Canaperi and co-directors Jessica Dimmock and Drea Cooper] don’t want to be filmmakers who make the thing then bail on the community and move on to the next thing."

However, if Flint Town does return for a second season, Canaperi says that they would "be taking a slightly different look at a different part of Flint."

For most of the filmmakers involved, Flint Town is only the latest chapter in a long-running relationship with the city. Co-directors Canaperi and Cooper previously collaborated on the film T-Rex, about Claressa “T-Rex” Shields — a young boxer from Flint who eventually went on to win Olympic Gold in 2012 and 2016. Cooper tells Bustle that while telling Shields' story, "The backdrop [of the film] was always the broken systems [of Flint]."

Cooper states that the goal of T-Rex was "to tell a different narrative about a place like Flint," comparing the triumphant story of T-Rex to the depressing realities of Flint that define it in news media. While T-Rex provided an uncommon look at Flint, Cooper believes that "Flint Town was our opportunity to go, 'You know what, you can’t shy away from the other issues in Flint.'"

Were Flint Town to return, the second season would likely be as different from the first season as the first season is from T-Rex — ultimately pointing the lens to a new part of Flint and telling a new story. Canaperi says, "Our interest [as filmmakers] is in systems. We’re interested in how systems work in a community like Flint." Canaperi believes that if Flint Town returns that it would cover an institution other than police, offering up "local politics, education systems, [and] journalism," as possible examples. If those themes sound familiar, it's because they happen to have been the focus of three seasons of the thematically similar fictional series The Wire, a coincidence that is not lost on the filmmakers.

Canepari says, "We’ve always referred to our project as the documentary version of The Wire. I think that’s really giving ourselves high praise... [but] that’s the aspiration." The Wire began, in its first season, as a story about drug-related crime in Baltimore. In each season, the show focused on a new part of Baltimore — from the city's docks, to the local political scene, to the education system, and finally the offices of the Baltimore Sun in its fifth and final season. Flint Town has not yet been renewed for a second season, but, if the show returns, it could end up being one of the most expansive and accurate documentations of what it's like to live in this urban America city in the early 21st century.