‘Uncoupled’: Neil Patrick Harris on Showtime Save, Possible Tonal Shift for Season 2

At first, it looked like Uncoupled would just be another Netflix series that was canceled after one season, and that would be it. Sure, shows are saved and picked up by other networks and streaming services more often than they used to, but that can’t happen for all, or even most, of them. However, then Showtime stepped in, and now Uncoupled will continue.

“I was pleased,” series star and executive producer Neil Patrick Harris told TV Insider recently of the save (while discussing reprising his How I Met Your Mother role as Barney Stinson on HIMYF). “To be honest, I wasn’t ahead of the story very much. I knew that Netflix was not going to pick it up for Season 2. They haven’t had a great string of luck with comedies that run less than an hour, and so that wasn’t a huge surprise.”

However, while Harris had heard that Showtime could step in, “then I read in all of the reporting that Netflix had passed and that it wasn’t happening anywhere else, it was done. And so I think we all kind of thought that was the case and it was only very late in the game did I hear that, ‘Oh no. Wait, it still might be happening.’ ‘Oh no. It’s probably happening.’ ‘Oh, it’s actually happening.'”

For the star, it’s “very exciting,” he said. “I watch a lot of shows on Showtime and I think it’ll allow for, I don’t know, a new lease on life, which provides a sort of new freedom. So we’ll see where that takes us.”

Has the plan for Season 2 stayed the same, or might things change with the move? “I really don’t [know],” Harris shared. “I asked [co-creators] Darren [Star] and Jeffrey [Richman] the same questions and they weren’t given any edicts as if since it’s on Showtime, it now will change and be less salacious or more scandalous. I think Showtime liked what we did on Season 1.”

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That being said, he does expect a tonal shift, to something “probably a bit more positive, just because the first season was so mired in the feeling of a breakup and how off-kilter that would make one. So I can only assume that in Season 2 there would be less of that because the breakup has passed.”

All he could share was that he knew the writing team was working on breaking stories. “We start filming in a bit, so I need to go back to the gym,” he said.

Uncoupled, Season 2, TBA, Showtime