The Hunting Party Star Addresses Season 1’s Rare 0% Rotten Tomatoes Score

With the show on the verge of its return, Melissa Roxburgh is candidly looking back on The Hunting Party season 1’s rare low Rotten Tomatoes score. Hailing from JJ Bailey, Roxburgh leads the NBC crime thriller as Rebecca “Bex” Henderson, an FBI profiler who is tasked with leading a team of soldiers and other special agents to find a group of escaped criminals from a secret prison that housed some of the country’s most dangerous killers experimented on by the government.

Also starring Nick Wechsler, Patrick Sabongui, Josh McKenzie and Sara Garcia, NBC’s efforts to fill the void left by The Blacklist got off to a rockier start as critics tore it apart for its formulaic plots and underwhelming execution of a promising concept, with the show debuting to a rare 0% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes before eventually rising to 25%. Even still, audiences were in defense of the thriller, netting it an 83% and solid enough ratings to score The Hunting Party a season 2 renewal.

Now, in an interview with ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns for its season 2 return, Roxburgh was asked about The Hunting Party season 1’s poor critical showing. Simultaneously chuckling and scoffing at the reception, the star began by expressing that “people are going to criticize everything“ and feeling that it’s “fine” if people didn’t care for the NBC thriller’s first season.

She went on to denote that The Hunting Party “is a fun show” about a group of agents who are trying to catch “serial killers who are weird as heck,” and that it’s “not supposed to be high art.” Instead, the goal of the series is to “entertain” audiences and “give people a spook before bed” with its dark roster of killers:

Melissa Roxburgh: We’re here to scratch the itch of the serial killer genre, and the true crime genre. So, I don’t really care if people didn’t like it. There are a lot of people who love the show, and those are the people we’re making it for.

In a world in which every network continues to find a new procedural to stand out among the crowded genre, The Hunting Party certainly isn’t the first show to find itself met with critical derision upon premiere. All of Dick Wolf’s One Chicago universe started off with underwhelming reactions from critics, but continues to be one of the most dominant franchises on network TV. CBS’ S.W.A.T. reboot similarly overcame mixed early reviews before going on to be saved from cancellation once and get an in-production spinoff.

Ultimately, the biggest point of validation against The Hunting Party‘s season 1 panning is the fact that the show is coming back for a second season. NBC notably cancelled multiple shows in 2025, including the Jesse L. Martin-led The Irrational and Shanola Hampton’s Found after two seasons, while the buzzed-about Suits LA was axed after one season, while Roxburgh’s show and Zachary Quinto’s Brilliant Minds made the cut.

As previously referred to by NBCUniversal Entertainment exec Jeff Bader, The Hunting Party was ultimately a success in how consistent its ratings were. After debuting with a modest 3.67 million viewers, the Roxburgh-led thriller actually grew in subsequent weeks, hovering in the mid-4-million-viewer range before ending with 3.72 million.

With The Hunting Party season 2 being a bigger test for Bailey and NBC, as it gets a full season in lieu of a shorter 10-episode count, it will be the ultimate decider of whether critics were wrong in their sharp critiques of the show. Having more episodes could give the writers room more space to breathe and let its story and characters evolve in a fashion that reviewers appreciate as much as fans who have defended it since season 1, and lay the foundation for many seasons to come.

The Hunting Party season 2 premieres on Thursday, January 8 at 10 p.m. EST, followed by new episodes weekly.

Release Date

January 19, 2025

Directors

Thor Freudenthal, Glen Winter, James Bamford, Nicole Rubio, Rod Hardy, Shana Stein, Blackhorse Lowe, Marcus Stokes, Kristin Windell