Kin Showrunner Reveals What We Could See In Season 2 And What He Borrows From The Godfather
Peter McKenna, the showrunner on the AMC+ Irish crime drama "Kin," wanted to create a show about family. Gangsters, yes. But also family.
"Behind the glamour, there is this whole world of emotional trauma," he told /Film. "It is a gangster show, but more than that for me — it's a family show. It's about a family, the relationships within a family, the dynamics, and the world they live in really allows me to do is turn up the heat on them."
And turn up the heat he does. Without getting into spoilers, "Kin" has the Kinsella family on a slow boil throughout the first season, only to see things bubble over in unexpected ways (check out /Film's review here).
Through the show's impressive cast, which includes Charlie Cox, Clare Dunne, Aidan Gillen, Emmett J Scanlan, Sam Keeley, Ciarán Hinds, and Maria Doyle Kennedy, we see how grief and trauma fundamentally changes someone, and not always for the best.
/Film had the chance to speak to McKenna about the show, including what we may see in a potential second season.
A Character Like Michael Corleone
It's not too much of a spoiler to say that Clare Dunne's character, Amanda Kinsella, becomes darker as the season progresses. Amanda's trajectory is something that McKenna had in mind from the start:
"It became very clear to me quickly writing it, that Amanda was driving the story. The thing that interested me most was this woman who had married in, who had been in a sense of denial, and suddenly she's thrust into it, and to follow her journey over the season."
Amanda, who McKenna also likened to Michael Corleone from "The Godfather," is mirrored on the show by Michael Kinsella, played by Charlie Cox (check out /Film's interview with Cox about "Kin" here). Cox's character is very quiet, but one with a murderous past. McKenna explains:
"The idea was, if we have multiple seasons, Amanda would journey from light to darkness, while [Michael's] journey is from darkness to light. They would go in opposite trajectories as they go on this multi-season story."
The first season of "Kin" has some closure, but there are plenty of loose ends that could be teased out for seasons to come. And while the show hasn't officially been picked up for season 2 yet, McKenna is already thinking about where he'd like to take the Kinsellas:
"What I would like to do is change the dynamic in the family completely. The first season was really about one woman's grief, and what that caused. The next one, I would really like to explore historical trauma. I know it sounds quite heavy, but it'll have all the bells and whistles of Gangland genre."
New episodes of "Kin" air on AMC+ on Thursdays.