The Hunting Party Survives NBC's Brutal Ratings Wars to Earn Second Season

On a Sunday evening in January 2025, NBC tried something odd. They aired the premiere of a new crime drama called The Hunting Party at 7 p.m., sandwiched against an NFL playoff game on another network. The strategy made little sense to industry observers at the time. A month later, the show's official in-slot debut landed with a thud, tying for the lowest-rated premiere of any NBC show that season.

Fourteen months on, that same series is heading into its second season on a new night, fresh off a Netflix deal, and carrying what appears to be genuine momentum. The numbers don't explain everything about television anymore, but The Hunting Party's survival story says something about how networks make decisions in 2026.

The Premise and the Problem

The Hunting Party is an American procedural crime drama created by JJ Bailey. The show centers on a fictional secret prison hidden beneath the Wyoming countryside called "The Pit," where the nation's most dangerous serial killers were being held and studied. When a catastrophic explosion tears through the facility, dozens of these killers escape, and a small team is assembled to track them down before they kill again.

Melissa Roxburgh, best known for starring in NBC's Manifest, leads the ensemble as Rebecca "Bex" Henderson, a disgraced former FBI profiler who gets pulled back into service for this particular assignment. The team around her includes Patrick Sabongui as CIA Agent Jacob Hassani, Josh McKenzie as prison guard Shane Florence, and Sara Garcia as Army Intelligence officer Jennifer Morales.

"What's different about this show is that we quickly know who has done it, but we don't know why and how they're going to change from what we previously know about them," Roxburgh said in an interview, describing the show's approach to its villains.

The comparison to CBS's long-running Criminal Minds and NBC's own The Blacklist was inevitable. Critics at Variety noted the show felt like "a mix between NBC's The Blacklist and CBS' Criminal Minds," describing it as "disturbing, and a tad predictable, but an overall engaging watch." That measured assessment tracked with audience reception. People who watched it seemed to enjoy it well enough. The trouble was getting enough people to watch in the first place.

Ratings That Should Have Killed It

Television ratings are complicated, but The Hunting Party's first season numbers were not encouraging by any traditional measure. The show debuted to a 0.22 rating in the key adults 18-49 demographic when it moved to its regular Monday time slot in February 2025. That number tied for the lowest premiere of any NBC scripted series that season.

The trajectory was worse than the starting point. After NCIS: Origins returned to the CBS schedule, competition ate into The Hunting Party's modest audience. By the season finale, the show was pulling a 0.13 rating. The season averaged a 0.22 overall, which placed it firmly in cancellation territory for most network dramas.

Industry analysts were blunt in their assessments. One ratings tracker called it "essentially DOA" and gave it a "likely cancellation" verdict early in its run. The argument for renewal seemed thin. NBC had limited schedule space, and several other shows appeared to have stronger cases for a second chance.

What Changed the Math

NBC renewed The Hunting Party for a second season on May 12, 2025. The decision surprised some observers, but the reasoning became clearer over subsequent months.

First, NBC fully owns the show through Universal Television. That ownership structure means the network captures all revenue from streaming, syndication, and licensing deals rather than splitting it with outside studios. For a show with modest linear ratings but potential long-term value, ownership matters.

Second, the Peacock streaming numbers apparently told a different story than the linear ratings. While concrete streaming data wasn't publicly disclosed, the show reportedly performed well enough on the platform to factor into renewal discussions. NBC has increasingly used streaming performance as a secondary metric when evaluating bubble shows.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, came the Netflix deal. The first season of The Hunting Party arrived on Netflix US on February 15, 2026, timed to coincide with NBC's Winter Olympics coverage and the show's second season premiere. Similar licensing arrangements have boosted other NBC properties. Found, another NBC procedural, saw viewership spikes after landing on Netflix.

Season Two and the New Time Slot

The second season premiered on January 8, 2026, but not on Monday nights. NBC moved The Hunting Party to Thursdays at 10 p.m., directly following Law & Order: SVU. The slot previously belonged to Law & Order: Organized Crime, which had been airing reruns.

Roxburgh seemed pleased with the change. "We still have the lead-in from Law & Order SVU," she noted. "I think it's great. This is definitely a nighttime show. Everyone loves to be scared before bed."

The new season brings expanded mythology and higher-profile guest stars. Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) and Kelsey Grammer (Frasier) both appear as villains this season, a casting strategy that suggests NBC wants to build buzz around individual episodes. Niecy Nash-Betts guest-starred in the second episode as a detective whose pursuit of a serial killer left her psychologically compromised. The twist at the end of that episode, where her character is revealed to have become a killer herself with thirteen bodies buried in her walls, demonstrated the show's willingness to go darker in its second year.

Filming for season one took place in Vancouver from June 20, 2024, through November 19, 2024. The production has since continued in the same location for the second season.

What the Show's Survival Means

The Hunting Party isn't going to redefine television or win major awards. Its critical reception has been mixed, with some viewers finding the writing predictable and the execution formulaic. IMDB user reviews reflect that divide, with praise for the premise and Roxburgh's performance sitting alongside complaints about "paint-by-numbers" storytelling and continuity issues.

But the show's path from apparent cancellation candidate to second-season pickup illustrates something about how broadcast networks now evaluate success. Linear ratings still matter, but they're no longer the only thing that matters. Streaming performance, ownership stakes, and licensing potential all factor into decisions that would have been purely ratings-driven a decade ago.

For viewers who enjoy procedural crime dramas with a high-concept twist, The Hunting Party offers exactly that. The escaped serial killers provide a steady supply of weekly villains, while the ongoing mystery of what really happened at The Pit gives the show a serialized spine. Whether that formula will build an audience on Thursday nights and Netflix remains the open question heading into spring 2026.

New episodes air Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC, with next-day streaming on Peacock. Season one is now available on both Peacock and Netflix.