The Hunting Party is finally back on NBC in the 2026 TV schedule, but the crime drama isn't returning to its former Monday night time slot. Melissa Roxburgh's post-Manifest series is moving to Thursday nights, where new episodes will air immediately after Law & Order: SVU in the slot previously held by Christopher Meloni's Law & Order: Organized Crime. Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Roxburgh opened up about her series' new time slot.
To be clear, the Law & Order: Organized Crime season that was airing at 10 p.m. ET on Thursdays last fall wasn't a batch of new episodes that NBC is bumping; rather, it was the fifth season that was already available streaming with a Peacock subscription. The Hunting Party replacing the SVU spinoff isn't bad news for fans of OC, but pretty great news for fans of the sophomore series. Melissa Roxburgh opened up about the move to Thursday nights:
We still have the lead in from Law & Order [SVU], right? I think it's great. I mean, this is definitely a nighttime show. Everyone loves to be scared before bed. And I think that what's fun about our show is that it's not so horrific that you won't be able to sleep, but it's titillating enough, if I'm allowed to say that word, that you get the itch scratched for the serial killer aspect and the true crime aspect. But you can still go to sleep.
It wasn't a huge surprise that The Hunting Party changed nights for Season 2; it would have been a shock if NBC moved it from the 10 p.m. ET time slot, because as Melissa Roxburgh said, it's "definitely a nighttime show" to deliver scares before bed. Some of these murderers definitely don't belong in the 8 p.m. hour!
The show isn't as serialized Organized Crime, with Bex and her team usually chasing new brutal killers each week. The actress went on to share what sets the Hunting Party murderers apart from those in the Law & Order franchise and other TV crime dramas:
Some killers are a little bit more courteous to our audience members than others. There will be some episodes that are kind of gross. I think in the trailer you're seeing watches on eyeballs, so that's not pleasant to look at, and there's a couple others that involve a bit more blood and gore. But it's never so much that you have to turn away from the screen. I cannot watch blood and gore on screen. Real-life stuff, whatever. That's fine. If someone gets hurt, I can help them. But on screen, there's just something about seeing it that I can't look at it. But this doesn't go quite that far, so audience members are safe.
We don't see all of the gruesomeness and gore of the serial killers on The Hunting Party, since the show does air on NBC. According to the leading lady, there's just a reasonable amount of blood and gore in the episodes. That was the case in Season 1, and the same seems to be true for Season 2. Fans can look forward to new characters – and killers – played by familiar TV faces as well, like Will & Grace's Eric McCormack and Frasier's Kelsey Grammer.
Check out the trailer below for a glimpse of the two sitcom vets looking quite serious, along with the "watches on eyeballs" that Melissa Roxburgh teased:
NBC is giving The Hunting Party a very big lead-in for the Season 2 premiere on January 8, as it won't just be preceded by a normal episode of Mariska Hargitay's long-running procedural. The primetime lineup kicks off with a much-hyped crossover between Law & Order Season 25 and Law & Order: SVU Season 27, which was described by one showrunner as a "two-hour, movie-type" event.
A crossover between the two shows with episodes that are also the winter premieres after nearly two months of hiatus as the lead-in? There could be a lot of eyes on NBC for the return of The Hunting Party. The Season 2 premiere, called "Ron Simms" and featuring Eric McCormack as the serial killer of the week, airs on Thursday, January 8 at 10 p.m. ET. You can also stream new episodes next day on Peacock.
