Why there won’t be a second season of After the Party

If you’ve seen the -riveting- After the Party (all episodes are on iview) you’ll be asking the question: is there going to be a second season?

But as Robyn Malcolm explains: that’s all folks.

“I’m not giving anything away, but a lot of people have said to us at the end, ‘You’ve got to write a sequel!’ But we don’t want to, we sort of feel that it does what it needs to do,” she said.

Malcolm co-created the series produced by Lingo Pictures with writer Dianne Taylor, and stars as a Wellington school teacher whose world implodes and ricochets.

Or as Malcolm’s analogy describes it, “We thought we’re gonna make this disagreeable woman, put her up a tree and throw rocks at her and see what happens.”

Malcolm’s performance won her an acting honour at Series Mania in France. The jury noted, “an incredible pair – Robyn Malcolm and Peter Mullan – deliver a remarkable story about the weight of accusation and truth.”

The series also explores Penny’s flawed nature against an ambiguous moral question.

“If you’re not a particularly likeable woman, should you be more or less trusted? Because we often trust people that we like. So someone who might be a bit strident or who might be a bit pissed off or, like Penny lecturing, might go on a bit. She’s got an agenda and should we trust that?” she asks.

“The woman that speaks out is so often pilloried but are we right to pillory her or not? We didn’t want to pass too much judgement on that. We just wanted to go ‘Okay, well, this seems to exist.'”

After the Party screens 8:30pm Sundays on ABC (all episodes on iview).