Nightsleeper Series 2 Reveals Colin Morgan, Madeleine Mantock and Christian Cooke as New Leads

The Nightsleeper series 2 cast has been revealed, with Colin Morgan, Madeleine Mantock and Christian Cooke leading a completely new story as the BBC’s real-time thriller swaps the railway for a passenger ferry.

Filming is now under way in Belfast on the second six-part series, which retains the Nightsleeper name and its real-time format while introducing a new setting, new characters and a new crisis.

The first series followed the passengers aboard an overnight train travelling from Glasgow to London after it was remotely hijacked. This time, the action moves onto the water.

Series two will centre on a passenger ferry travelling overnight from Belfast to Liverpool. The ship becomes the target of a sophisticated cyberattack, leaving those on board facing a rapidly developing emergency.

Nightsleeper series 2 cast brings together familiar faces

Colin Morgan leads the new cast as Joe Cole, a former Royal Navy officer who is travelling aboard the ferry when the attack begins.

Morgan is well known to British television audiences from Merlin, in which he played the title character across five series on BBC One. His more recent television work includes Belfast, The Crown and Dead and Buried.

Madeleine Mantock joins him as Polly Sullivan, a senior officer at the Maritime and Coastguard Agency who becomes involved in the response from land.

Mantock’s previous credits include Into the Badlands, Charmed and The Long Song.

Christian Cooke will play ferry captain Richard Dunn. Cooke has appeared in productions including The Art of More, Ordeal by Innocence and Rematch.

The wider Nightsleeper series 2 cast includes Derry Girls actor Ian McElhinney, together with Valene Kane, Patrick Gibson, Bronagh Waugh, Peter Claffey and several other performers joining the new story.

From a sleeper train to a passenger ferry

The decision to move away from the railway represents a substantial change for Nightsleeper without abandoning the concept that defined its first series.

Rather than simply placing another group of passengers on another train, series two takes the central idea of people trapped aboard a compromised form of transport and applies it to a very different environment.

A ferry travelling between Belfast and Liverpool also gives the production a distinct geographical identity.

The new series is currently filming in Belfast and is being produced by Fremantle’s Euston Films for the BBC. Nick Leather, who created and wrote the original series, returns as writer and executive producer.

The first Nightsleeper was built around a crisis unfolding in real time. Viewers followed events aboard the train alongside the attempts of cybersecurity experts and authorities to understand who had taken control of it and why.

That structure will remain central to series two.

The BBC has described the new story as another real-time thriller, meaning the six episodes will again follow the emergency as it develops rather than jumping across an extended period.

A fresh story rather than a conventional continuation

The new casting also makes clear that the second series is being approached as a fresh chapter rather than a straightforward continuation of the first storyline.

Joe Cole, Polly Sullivan and Richard Dunn are new characters, while the ferry provides an entirely different environment for the cyberattack at the heart of the drama.

It effectively allows Nightsleeper to develop into an anthology-style thriller, retaining its central format while changing the people, location and transport system involved.

That gives the BBC room to preserve what made the original programme distinctive without recreating exactly the same emergency.

The first series launched on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in September 2024, with all six episodes made available on iPlayer alongside the television broadcast.

A transmission date for series two has not yet been announced.

For now, the confirmed Nightsleeper series 2 cast, the move to the Belfast-to-Liverpool ferry and the return of the real-time format give the clearest indication yet of how the BBC plans to expand the thriller beyond its original runaway-train story.

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