A second season of the award-winning documentary series Escaping Utopia – which sheds light on the inner workings of Christian sect Gloriavale – has been confirmed.
It follows the success of the first season, which revealed the careful planning involved for leavers of the sect and showed the unravelling of its leadership, as well as the pursuit of justice by the Gloriavale Leavers’ Trust.
The West Coast community has been the subject of various television series over the decades as it has faced allegations of abuse, sexual offending, human rights violations, employment dispute cases and fraud.
This afternoon, TVNZ announced the second two-part series of the multi-award-winning programme, with funding support as part of NZ On Air’s Scripted and Non-fiction round.
It said the series will “continue to expose life inside one of New Zealand’s most secretive communities, giving voice to those breaking free from Gloriavale”.
The programme was announced alongside a raft of other local shows that will be screened on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+, including a confirmed seventh season of the popular comedy series Taskmaster NZ and The Casketeers: Life & Death Around the Globe.
TVNZ’s Chief News and Content Officer Nadia Tolich said “local storytelling sits at the core of our programming strategy” and hoped the Kiwi stories would “entertain, inspire and strike a chord with audiences across Aotearoa”.
Additional TVNZ projects supported include three more one-off documentaries as part of the return of Documentary NZ, as well as Eat Well for Less NZ season 6, Diary of a Junior Doctor season 2, Q+A with Jack Tame and Tagata Pasifika, among others.
