Here's When 'Pine Gap' Will Likely Be Returning for Season 2

Netflix's newest drama series, Pine Gap — which premieres Friday, Dec. 7 — takes place on a military base in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. The intelligence analysts are both Americans and Australians, but when an unannounced missile takes down a civilian plane, it threatens to tear the team apart. As a result, each country begin suspecting the other of foul play. But as for whether Pine Gap has been renewed for Season 2, it's all quiet on the Australian front.

The thriller series stars Parker Sawyers as an American named Gus Thompson (best known for his role as Barack Obama in Southside with You). "I'd been looking for something like this, where I'm not playing a stereotypical black trope character from the hood," Sawyers told the Sydney Morning Herald of his Pine Gap role. "I read this, and I stopped understanding it. I like the challenge of that."

According to the same article, Gus is the American mission director, and he starts a relationship with an Australian spy named Jasmina Delic (Tess Haubrich). However, they're also keeping an eye on each other to see if they're involved in any foul play. "[W]hen you enter into an intimate relationship with someone, there is a not-unreasonable expectation that you will be honest with them," co-creator Felicity Packard tells the Sydney Morning Herald. "But what if you've signed a secrecy agreement with your country, and this person is from another country? You have to make it O.K. in your head, to say it is O.K. to lie to people who trust me because this matters more."

It's a game of political and national chess, where no one knows who to trust. "Americans are deeply loyal to their country," Kath Sinclair (Safe Harbour's Jacqueline McKenzie) warns Jasmina in the trailer. "And that loyalty will always come first." Although it's unclear who's ultimately to blame here, it's obvious that something is rotten in the state of Pine Gap.

As for the show's production, the series was produced by Screentime and ABC (which, in this case, stands for Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in partnership with Netflix, per the Australian publication IF. "For us Netflix was a no-brainer,” Screentime’s Bob Campbell told the magazine. "They are open to doing shows that look and sound different and are not necessarily made in Burbank or New York or Arizona. They are spreading their wings."

The series first aired Oct. 14 on Australian television before coming to Netflix, according to a report by the Guardian. As a result, audiences already know what to expect — and they may not like it. Pine Gap seems to have performed poorly Down Under, receiving scathing reviews from the Guardian and the Daily Review. However, that doesn't mean that American audiences will feel the same way.

Furthermore, it's simply too soon to tell whether Pine Gap will have a Season 2, but it will be interesting to see if its negative Australian reviews will result in its cancelation. The series was commissioned back in Sept. 2017, per the same IF report, so even if the series is renewed for further seasons, it likely won't arrive on Netflix until this time next year. But until then, audiences can still burn through a number of thrillers, like Bodyguard, Peaky Blinders, or Narcos: Mexico. But whatever Pine Gap's fate, viewers can still watch its six-episode season and decide for themselves who's trustworthy and who's saving face.