R.J. Decker Renewed for Season 2 at ABC

Scott Speedman is staying in South Florida. ABC has renewed R.J. Decker for a second season, TVLine first reported — and the pickup does more than just save one show. It completes something genuinely rare in network television: ABC has renewed every single one of its current scripted series for the 2026-27 season. Ten shows. Zero cancellations. The network hasn’t pulled that off since at least 2012.

R.J. Decker was the last scripted show on ABC’s slate with an undecided future, and it had been sitting squarely on the bubble. The freshman drama tapered off after a strong launch — its March 3 premiere behind High Potential became the network’s best 10 PM drama premiere on linear in over five years, accumulating more than 15 million viewers through 35 days of multiplatform viewing on ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and digital platforms. But in average linear numbers week to week, it lagged behind its Tuesday lead-ins, Will Trent and High Potential. Still, it held its own on Hulu, regularly cracking the Daily Top 10, and over seven days of linear-only viewing it averaged just under 5 million viewers — right in line with The Rookie (5.23 million) and fellow first-year drama 9-1-1: Nashville (4.73 million).

Behind the scenes, the show had sizable internal support. Speedman himself was a major selling point, and there was belief in the series’ trajectory over the course of the season — even accounting for a rocky start that included a pilot with reshoots following a recasting. A telling sign came late last month when Speedman appeared at Disney’s TV awards season party alongside talent from shows that had already been renewed.

What the Show Is About

Based on Carl Hiaasen’s 1987 crime novel Double Whammy, R.J. Decker follows a disgraced former newspaper photographer and ex-convict who reinvents himself as a private investigator in the gloriously chaotic world of South Florida. Speedman plays the title character alongside Jaina Lee Ortiz as his journalist ex Emilia “Emi” Ochoa, Bevin Bru as her police detective wife Melody “Mel” Abreu, Kevin Rankin as Aloysius “Wish” Aiken, and Adelaide Clemens as the enigmatic Catherine Delacroix — a woman from R.J.’s past who could be his greatest ally or his fastest route back to prison.

Showrunner Rob Doherty, who previously ran Elementary, adapted Hiaasen’s novel and executive produces alongside Carl Beverly, Sarah Timberman, Hiaasen himself, and Jason Tracey. Speedman also serves as a producer. The series is produced by 20th Television.

“The first time somebody talked to me about Carl Hiaasen, and what the show should be like, she said it’s a love letter to Floridian weirdness,” Doherty told TVLine at the show’s premiere. “That’s what we’re trying to be. Something we care about is embracing the weirdness of the place without speaking down to it.”

ABC’s Unprecedented Clean Sweep

To put the full scope of this moment in context: ABC is heading into next season with 9-1-1 (Season 10), 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 2), Abbott Elementary (Season 6), Grey’s Anatomy (Season 23), High Potential (Season 3), The Rookie (Season 9), Scrubs (Season 2), Shifting Gears (Season 3), Will Trent (Season 5), and now R.J. Decker (Season 2). It’s worth noting that while Fox also skipped cancellations heading into the 2024-25 season, that was widely considered an anomaly born out of the Hollywood strikes disrupting development — this feels different.

The network also has one pilot still in play for a pickup: The Rookie: North, a spinoff starring Jay Ellis. If that gets the green light — and it’s expected to — Deadline reports it could result in slightly trimmed episode orders for some existing ABC shows to accommodate the expanded slate. The network recently passed on a comedy pilot called Do You Want Kids? from Rachel Bloom and Dan Gregor, making The Rookie: North the lone remaining decision.

For Speedman and the R.J. Decker team, the renewal means more time in the sunshine — and more of that Floridian weirdness to come.