ITV show announces return for season 2 despite major backlash

ITV's popular sitcom Piglets have been renewed for a second season - despite it's controversial name receiving huge backlash at the time of the show's release. The comedy series, which follows a group of trainee police officers, was criticised by used a derogatory word for police officers. 

Speaking about the show's renewal on the Reading Between the Lines postcast, actor Richy Champ said: "Piglets has been commissioned for series two. It’s crazy, because we got absolutely slammed. The first series came out and it was met with absolute venom – across the board. Immediately, I thought, 'That’s that done'. But it got good figures and ITV obviously noticed that."

At the time of the show's release, the Police Federation of England and Wales claimed that the title was "highly offensive to police officers risking their lives to protect the public every day," to which ITV responded in a statement that read: "Piglets is a fictional new comedy about a police training academy and the title is not intended to cause any offence. 

"It’s a comedic and endearing play on words to emphasise the innocence and youth of our young trainees."

The head of comedy, Nana Hughes, added: "Comedy is subjective, so some people will like it and others won’t but hopefully most will. We thought Piglets was just a funny, cute name for our bunch of trainees. Can we change it? No, it’s all done now. It’s on air in a week. There just wouldn’t be time." 

Piglets is based in a fictional police training college, which the syopsis reading: "The government’s stated policy of recruiting 20,000 new police officers in double quick time has not come at the cost of lowering standards. Or has it?

"Piglets’ follows a newly recruited group of six very different would-be cops and the handful of key staff whose thankless task it is to knock them into some kind of shape." 

© Ricky Darko

Fans had something of a mixed reaction to the first season, with one person posting on X: "Need a second series ASAP! Absolutely loved this!" Another person wrote: "Bloody fiasco. The level of comedic acting & script is astonishingly low. Aimed, I believe, at pre school children." 

A third person wrote: "From the writers & actors to the costume department, #ITV's police comedy #Piglets is having unpretentious fun. It's silly, harmless humour, without a whiff of police controversy, as a bunch of hapless trainees and tutors have a laugh with power dynamics."