Netflix’s Hit & Run is not coming back for a season 2.
Though the Israeli-American thriller was well received by critics and audiences alike, the streaming service cancelled the series partly because of its expensive production cost. Filmed in New York and Israel, Hit & Run’s nine-episode season 1 took three years to produce due to the COVID-related industry shutdown that took place in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hit & Run also didn’t seem to attract enough viewers to deserve a sophomore run. After premiering on Netflix on August 6th, the series managed to break into Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 the following week at No. 8. That, however, was the only time it appeared on the overall weekly chart, which Netflix originals like Outer Banks and Virgin River recently topped.
Created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff of Netflix’s Fauda as well as Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin of Amazon Prime Video’s Z: The Beginning of Everything, Hit & Run centers on Segev Azulai (Raz), a tour guide who lives a contented life in Tel Aviv with his young daughter (Neta Orbach) and his new American wife Danielle (Kaelen Ohm). But when Danielle is killed in a mysterious hit and run on the day she was set to return to New York for a visit, Segev suspects it may not have been an accident.
Grief-stricken and confused, Segev searches for his wife’s killers, who have fled to the U.S. With the help of his Israeli police detective cousin (Moran Rosenblatt), an old friend (Gal Toren), and an American ex-lover (Sanaa Lathan) who is a savvy investigative reporter, Segev uncovers disturbing truths about his beloved wife and the secrets she kept from him.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last August, Prestwich revealed that it was Netflix that ultimately decided to conclude Hit & Run’s freshman run with a cliffhanger ending. And since the show’s fate had not been finalized at that time, it seemed that the streamer’s choice of a cliffhanger ending gave the creators false hope that the series would come back for another season.
“We had early on pitched our idea for the cliffhanger,” Prestwich told the news outlet. “Then, in the process of breaking the story and by the time we knew what the entire season was going to be, and we went in and pitched it to Netflix, we were undecided. We thought, maybe we won’t make that choice. But Netflix missed it and said, ‘We want that.’ So it was like, ‘Ok, we’ll come back!’ We’re very excited. We definitely feel like the show needs at least another season.”