Richard Osman has all but confirmed that his second crime franchise is heading to Netflix as a series. Speaking on BBC’s The One Show, the novelist and broadcaster was asked whether an adaptation of We Solve Murders was still on. His answer: “Well, I can’t say. But yes” — adding that this is what he and his “friends at Netflix” are working on right now.
What is actually confirmed
Netflix acquired the rights to We Solve Murders in early 2024, before the book was even published that September. Osman disclosed the deal on ITV’s This Morning in February 2024, joking that if readers rejected the book, the streamer would simply go quiet. Readers did not reject it. The sequel, We Chase Shadows, arrives on 15 September.
The story follows Amy Wheeler, a private security operative guarding bestselling author Rosie D’Antonio on a remote island. A corpse and a bag of cash turn up, and Amy calls in her retired-detective father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, to help work the case.
Why a series, not a film
The format choice is the most commercially interesting detail here. Osman’s first franchise, The Thursday Murder Club, went to Netflix as a feature, released a year ago. We Solve Murders is being framed as a series — and for a streamer, that difference is not cosmetic.
- Retention economics. A film delivers one big weekend of viewing and then decays. A returning series with a fixed detective pairing gives Netflix a recurring reason to bill a subscriber, and a library title that can be re-promoted on every new season launch.
- Ad-tier inventory. Episodic runtime generates far more ad-supported minutes than a single feature. Cosy crime skews older and skews heavily female — an audience segment advertisers underserve and pay a premium to reach.
- Publishing flywheel. With a second book already out this month, Netflix has a pre-tested season roadmap and a marketing partner in the publisher, at no extra cost.
- Franchise insulation. Two Osman worlds under one roof means the streamer is not dependent on a single cast staying available or a single film performing.
The cosy crime playbook
Comfort-watch mystery is one of the few genres that travels almost frictionlessly across markets and works equally well as background viewing. That matters for platforms chasing hours rather than moments. The genre’s economics are also friendly: contained locations, mid-range casts, no VFX load, and a plot engine that resets every episode or every season.
For Indian streamers, the read-across is direct. The local equivalent — procedural or investigative dramas with a fixed, likeable lead pairing — has consistently outperformed one-off prestige swings on watch-time-per-rupee. Osman’s model shows what happens when a proven IP owner keeps writing new instalments faster than the adaptation pipeline can consume them: the platform gets optionality, and the risk of a cold start disappears.
What to watch next
Nothing has been announced formally — no cast, no writers’ room, no window. Treat this as development confirmation from the author, not a greenlight press release. The signals worth tracking are the ones that come next: a showrunner attachment, a UK production base, and whether Netflix schedules it close to a book launch to stack the two marketing beats together.
For media planners, the practical takeaway is timing. If the series does land, expect it to be positioned as a broad-appeal, family-safe title — the kind of inventory that ad tiers price at the top end. Keep it on the watchlist for UK-origin, globally distributed comfort programming, a category that has quietly become one of streaming’s most reliable performers.
Source: Deadline
