Starz's 'Girlfriend Experience' will get a second season, sans Riley Keough

Good news for fans of dark sexual dramas and Starz: The critically acclaimed series, The Girlfriend Experience, is getting a whole new set of clients and complicated relationships. Though the bad news for those who binged the first season: It will be without Riley Keough.

Starz President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Albrecht announced Monday at TCA that the show has been greenlit for a second season with executive producer Steven Soderbergh and an entirely new cast of characters and plotlines. Make that two new sets. The 14-episode season will be divided into two seven-episode stories, Paste BN has learned, which may or may not run back-to-back. One will be written and directed by producer Lodge Kerrigan, and the other by producer Amy Seimetz, who have “different sensibilities,” says Carmi Zlotnik, managing director of Starz.

The first season, which follows Christine Reade, a second year student at Chicago-Burnham Law School and a new intern at a prestigious law firm as she enters the world of sex work, was loosely based on Steven Soderbergh's 2009 movie starring Sasha Grey. And carried largely by Keough, who reveled in telling an atypical escort story.

“I liked the idea of showing a girl who doesn’t come from an oppressive background, who is intelligent and has a lot going for her, that ends up in sex work. Not the other story, which has been told before,” Keough told Paste BN.

Paul Sparks was another highlight as the high-powered attorney, David Tellis, turned romantic interest.

The first season contained some of the best displays of sex on TV, and was an undeniable hit for Starz, which has similarly capitalized with Outlander. A date for the new season has not been released.