Beef Season 2 Explores Class Tensions in Exclusive Montecito Country Clubs

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Netflix's dark comedy series Beef returns for a second season that shifts its setting from suburban Los Angeles to the affluent enclave of Montecito, California, using real-world country clubs and private social spaces as narrative backdrops to explore escalating tensions around class, marriage, and corporate ambition. The season features Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac in lead roles, continuing the anthology format created by writer and director Lee Sung Jin, who has revealed that the new installment examines how personal relationships fracture under the pressure of inherited wealth and social performance.

Why it matters

Beef Season 2 reflects a broader trend in prestige television toward examining the anxieties of the professional-managerial class, particularly in post-pandemic America where wealth disparity and social mobility remain flashpoints. By anchoring its drama in specific, recognizable spaces like the manicured lawns and wood-paneled lounges of Montecito's country clubs, the series transforms abstract debates about inequality into intimate, character-driven stories.

The details

According to interviews with the series' creator and reporting from entertainment outlets, Season 2 of Beef centers on two couples whose lives intersect at exclusive Montecito country clubs—venues that, while fictionalized in the show, are modeled after real institutions such as the Montecito Country Club and Birnam Wood Golf Club. These locations serve not only as scenic contrasts to the first season's auto-body shops and storage facilities but as symbolic arenas where etiquette, access, and unspoken rules govern behavior more than income alone. Lee Sung Jin, the show's writer and director, explained that the country club setting allows the series to scrutinize how class operates beyond mere economics, exploring themes of social capital, legacy, and the quiet humiliations that define elite circles.

• Beef Season 2 premiered in April 2026.

What they’re saying

What’s next

While Netflix has not announced plans for a third season, Lee Sung Jin has indicated that the anthology format allows for future installments to explore other facets of modern American life through similarly contained, high-tension narratives.