Usually, the return of a great TV series is cause for celebration. In the case of Bad Sisters, it’s cause for a fair amount of scepticism – and a sliver of hope. That’s because the Dublin-set whodunnit’s original run – a stunningly engineered split-timeline story of ultimate revenge against an abusive husband (a mesmerisingly monstrous Claes Bang) – was so perfectly self-contained. We knew from the start that John Paul – married to the guileless Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), and the bane of her four sisters’ lives – was dead, but not why. We witnessed Grace’s siblings repeatedly fail to murder the man they’d rechristened The Prick – while, in the present day, Claffin & Sons insurers tried to avoid a pay-out by proving the women had killed him – yet we were kept in the dark about his actual fate until the end, when it was revealed that Grace herself had done the deed. After striking a deal with the Claffins to keep quiet, the series ended euphorically – with a punch of cosmic justice and a sense of hard-won liberation.
Bad Sisters worked exceptionally well as a one-off, both in structural terms and as a fascinatingly idiosyncratic piece of TV, managing to pepper a profound and horrifying study of coercive control with hilarity. Plot-wise, it stuck close to the original 2012 Belgian series – which, tellingly, never attempted a follow-up. Yet for certain streamers, hits are clearly only there to be built on. I was praying that Sharon Horgan – who co-created the show and stars as eldest sister Eva – would manage to magic up a similarly clever storyline for season two. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.
Bringing back Bad Sisters was always going to be a big ask: the novel hook of the original was that we desperately wanted these women to get away with murder; any sequel would have to entertain the depressing prospect that they didn’t manage to. That’s exactly what happens here, as we rejoin the Garveys two years on from The Prick’s death, with Grace preparing to marry the apparently lovely Ian. The show tugs at the one tiny (and essentially irrelevant) loose end from season one, as the new owners of John Paul’s parents’ home dredge up a suitcase containing his father’s corpse from the pond. Soon, Inspector Loftus and his puppyish protege, Houlihan (Thaddea Graham), are sniffing around for more intel about John Paul’s death.
The sense that the sisters cannot escape The Prick obliterates any trace of Bad Sisters’ trademark transgressive joy – but things only get worse from there. Grace is spooked by the sudden interest in her late husband, and tells Ian about her crime. He promptly deserts her – although the sisters wonder if she’s actually killed him too. Then a hysterical Grace gets distracted during a late-night drive and a greater tragedy steamrollers into the Garveys’ lives. Meanwhile, we meet Angelica (Fiona Shaw), sister of Grace’s former neighbour Roger (the one The Prick falsely branded a paedophile, who helped Grace stage John Paul’s accident). She is increasingly suspicious about her brother, whose guilt has driven him to drink (and, disappointingly, intense creepiness towards the sisters). Her meddling leads the Garveys to nickname her The Wagon (an Irish equivalent to bitch) – but will she land them all in jail?
All cynicism aside, I was very much looking forward to reuniting with the Garveys. In season one, Eve Hewson was magnetic as cheeky, chaotic youngest sister Becka, while Sarah Greene imbued Bibi with mordant wit and Eva Birthistle was both girlish and world-weary as mum-of-three Ursula. And I will never, ever tire of having Horgan on my screen, especially when she’s playing Eva: middle-aged, single and childfree, and all the more cool and aspirational for it. The cast have impeccable chemistry, which translates into totally plausible sisterly energy. Yet as things take a darker, more morose turn in season two, the sisters become significantly less charming. Becka is glum, Ursula a desperate thief and Eva’s integrity disintegrates in an extremely dispiriting fashion.
The sisters’ fates are largely unrelated, and the criss-crossing of plots here feels inordinately messy: at times there seem to be five murder investigations happening concurrently. In the absence of a clear villain (The Wagon is no replacement for The Prick), we are bombarded with narrative threads, many of which are quietly dropped throughout the series. Where the original was streamlined and propulsive, the show now feels rambling and random.
I won’t spoil the final reveal – after this opening double-bill, episodes are released weekly – but suffice to say there is no real closure for the Garveys. The evocative portrayal of sisterhood, the impressive cast and the occasional razor-sharp gag mean it’s hard to condemn this as an unequivocally bad show – but it’s certainly no longer a particularly good one.
• Bad Sisters is on Apple TV+
