The kids trot the globe to save their own in Season 2 of ‘Mysterious Benedict Society’

The Mysterious Benedict Society, streaming on Disney+, Wednesday

Series co-creator and executive producer Phil Hay calls Season 2 of “The Mysterious Benedict Society” a season of “planes, trains and automobiles” — though with a Golden Age ocean liner and a zeppelin mixed in for good measure. Premiering Wednesday, Oct. 26, on Disney+ with a pair of episodes, the new round picks up with “The Emergency” ended by the eccentric Mr. Benedict (Tony Hale), a heroic feat for which his less-than-virtuous twin brother L.D. Curtain (also Hale) has taken credit. But when Benedict and his assistant Number Two (Kristen Schaal) are kidnapped, his young recruits Reynie, Sticky, Kate and Constance (Mystic Inscho, Seth B. Carr, Emmy DeOliveira, Marta Kessler) head off by land, sea and air on a trek across Europe, piecing together riddles and clues, to save the world from Curtain’s latest nefarious scheme and rescue their lost comrades. Their journeys on the high seas take them onto the luxury liner the S.S. Shortcut, whose scenes were actually filmed aboard the RMS Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, Calif. The ship becomes a character in the story. “I don’t know what we would have done if the Queen Mary didn’t happen to be docked in Long Beach,” Hay says with a laugh. “It’s kind of a unique location.” “It was a dream,” adds co-creator and executive producer Matt Manfredi. “They just don’t make that kind of elegance anymore, like there’s just the one. We really would have probably had to write around it if it wasn’t available because it was rumored to be a very difficult place to shoot. And it was but they really opened it up and made it easy for us — or as easy as it could be.” Which wasn’t very. In shooting scenes around the ship, including in the engine room and bridge, both men say the crew really earned their money as it was clearly not built for making a TV show. And the youthful actors got a lesson in what luxury travel was like 80 years ago. As for the older cast, Hale gives his usual tour-de-force in the dual roles of Benedict and Curtain, once again inhabiting two completely different characters who happen to share the same DNA. “Tony, of course, is so talented and always so prepared and thoughtful in terms of his approach to the scripts and the act and the work,” Manfredi says. “And there are times when I just kind of forget that it’s one actor. You know, his posture changes, his cadence changes and he looks completely different. So it’s just kind of a joy to watch.” “Not only are their body types different,” Hay adds, “somehow he turns posture into an absolute character choice.”