Bad sisters (season 1)

There’s no reason to be coy or to beat around the bush here - Bad Sisters is one of the very best shows on TV at the moment. Inspired by the Flemish series Clan, this blackly comic Apple TV+ offering is the latest from immensely talented writer/star Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe), and, if there’s any shred of common sense, this should cement her place as one of the medium’s leading creative voices.  

Set in Dublin, the show revolves around the five close-knit Garvey sisters - specifically the gentle-tempered Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), who has the misfortune of being married to the almost unfathomably loathsome John Paul (Claes Bang)… a prick of such astonishing magnitude that Grace’s sisters - Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson) - finally decide they have no recourse but to plot his demise. In a rather brilliant structural move, half of the series takes place in the aftermath of John Paul’s funeral, as half-brothers and mismatched insurance investigators Thomas (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack) show up, desperately looking for any excuse to prevent Grace from collecting on her husband’s life insurance policy (a situation made that much more complicated by Matt and Becka becoming romantically entangled before either realizes who the other is)… while the other half unfolds in flashbacks, following the Garvey sisters as they try in vain to plan the perfect murder (if the early episodes have an overly farcical whiff about them (it’s hard not to be five steps ahead of a liver poisoning plot that goes awry), it’s worth persisting; the narrative threads braid together slowly, delicately… almost imperceptibly).

While it seems impossible to believe that John Paul doesn’t inevitably come off as the most cartoonish of caricatures, such is the laser-attuned specificity of the writing (and the impressive discipline of Bang’s performance), that this is never the case (the fiendishness with which he manipulates, gaslights and generally ill-treats Grace in particular frequently causes you to suck the air in through your teeth). But the show in general doesn’t traffic in simplistic moral binaries. Thomas seemingly begins the series as a garden variety weasel whose utter cheek in insinuating himself in the lives of the grieving Grace and her sisters is appalling, even to Matt… but as his motivations for wanting to see the claim rejected come into focus, he becomes possibly the show’s most painfully relatable character. Likewise, the married Ursula’s primary impulse for wanting John Paul dead is his threat to expose her ongoing affair with a scruffy photographer; his behavior may be smugly repulsive, even violative, but she hardly ranks as the sympathetic party in the equation (which isn’t meant as a condemnation either - she’s just flawed and messy, as, you know… people tend to be). 

The entire cast is excellent, and it’s no surprise that Horgan is the dependable conductor who ensures the trains run on time, so to speak. But three in particular are worthy of mention. Sarah Greene, as the one-eyed Bibi (and so tremendous does she look with an eye-patch, it’s difficult to go back to her non-eye-patched acting), is the most venomously aggressive about seeing the plan through, delivering each and every line with a barb of vinegary disdain… but also soars to tragicomic heights, particularly in the pitch-perfect payoff to the paintball episode; Eve Hewson, as the flighty but almost criminally adorable Becka (the sort of Irish girl one aspires to meet, but doesn’t quite believe really exists), is heartbreaking for so many reasons; and Daryl McCormack, who flexes major star potential as Matt, plays a thoroughly decent figure who finds his loyalties painfully pulled in multiple directions as he’s abruptly positioned as the denouement’s unlikely catalyst.   ​

More than anything though, Bad Sisters is frequently and morbidly hilarious. Looking to minimize any chance of collateral damage, the sisters plot to spike John Paul’s nose spray with Rohypnol… only for the situation to spiral completely and riotously out of control (a cat’s unfortunate fate strikes a sour note, but - objectively - the fallout marvelously underscores, once again, what a  monumental turd John Paul is). As the series soldiers towards the brink of its climactic revelations - effectively scored to God’s Gonna Cut You Down - it’s not terribly difficult to figure out where things are headed (and as the final pieces fall into place, a few of the plot seams do admittedly start to show), but the conclusion is both appropriate and satisfying. Bad Sisters is a self-contained and fully-realized season of television, but some sort of follow-up - in which the Garvey sisters find themselves enmeshed in a fresh pickle of some sort - would be more than welcome. These characters are far, far too good to bid farewell to already.