Search Party Renewed For Fifth Season
The dark comedy Search Party has been caught in a weird transitional place in TV history. It was introduced as a bingeable show — on TBS. The cable channel decided to dump all the episodes at once on TBS.com and their on-demand offerings, and then show the first season in one giant marathon. Though the show was a success, TBS did not repeat the strategy, releasing Season 2 traditionally.
Then, after news of a Season 3 renewal, Search Party disappeared. Over a year went by without any acknowledgement from TBS that the show would be on their schedule soon. It began to look like Search Party needed a search party of its own….until the series turned up on a press release for HBO Max, revealing its new status as a streaming show (where it should’ve been in the first place, honestly). Not only that, the crew had continued filming even though the episodes weren’t being seen, and were working on a Season 4.
So Seasons 3 and 4 of Search Party appeared pretty close to each other, and the last episodes of the fourth season just concluded. How did Dory and her self-absorbed besties adapt to the new platform? …Pretty darn well if the latest news is any indication. Not only has the series been granted a Season 5, but series creators Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss (photo above credited to Benjamin Askinas) have signed a two-year deal to create more shows for HBO Max.
“We are thrilled that HBO Max has not only given the world a fifth season of ‘Search Party,’ but also shown this much faith in our partnership with them as we develop new projects for the platform,” Bliss and Rogers said in a released statement. “Potential titles for upcoming shows include ‘Monkeys Love Manhattan’ and ‘The Pineapple Predicament.’ Those aren’t actual shows we would ever pitch but it exhibits that we can make up titles if we need to.”
Search Party stars stars Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, John Early and Meredith Hagner. There’s no word on when this fifth season could appear, but we just got two, so don’t get greedy.