Bad Sisters

Sharon Horgan Eve Hewson Eva Birthistle and Sarah Greene in “Bad Sisters.” Natalie Seery/Apple TV+.

Bad Sisters delivers what contemporary streaming demands: narrative franticity and cliffhangerism of the sort that compels viewers to binge. Much of the fun of Bad Sisters lies in the fantasizing of intricate assassinations. For Eva and her sisters, the worst part is the way JP treats Grace: calling her “Mammy,” undermining her fragile confidence, restricting her movements and generally reducing her to a ghost of her youthful self. So does PJ Harvey’s baleful rendition of the Leonard Cohen song “Who By Fire,” itself a list of fatalities and methods of dispatch: “Who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate?... The ten episode series quickly reveals itself as a quirky whodunnit, filed somewhere between Only Murders in the Building and Dead to Me, with a touch of Fleabag’s rumpled charm. The very first time we glimpse JP, he’s lying in a coffin, where Grace tries to hide his posthumous boner with a bit of her embroidery.

In the premiere of the new Apple TV+ series, we meet the Garvey sisters, who might be in trouble after their hated brother-in-law ends up dead.

It says a lot about the strength of the trust she has in her sisters that she still feels able to show her anger to them, even for a moment. • Meanwhile, Ursula is introduced paying attention to her phone, her back turned to a cacophony of kids and husband in the house behind her. Not anymore.” This is how Bibi views her relationship to Grace and, again, gives us a wealth of character information all in one exchange of lines. But if we are going to keep telling them, I want them to be like this one: centering complex relationships between complex women; deeply interested in establishing a sense of place (extra points for Irish accents!); and recognizing how humor and love can still exist in the midst of grief and pain. It could have just been a lie inadvertently made in the midst of the mental stress of mourning, but I am also low-key wondering if Grace is the one who killed JP. • Bibi is introduced in the tub, alongside her caring wife, the morning of JP’s funeral. Then, when an excited Grace and Blánaid prepare to leave, he not only insists that she is too drunk to drive and swim but implies she is at fault for the entire situation. Past their function as plot drivers putting pressure on the Garvey sisters, Thomas and Matthew are also a reminder that this is a show about siblings and the complicated family dynamics that can follow us into adulthood — or sometimes evolve there. In the meantime, it’s easy to fall in love with each of the sisters — in no small part because of the ferocious affection and commitment they all have to one another. To JP, Grace’s strong, healthy relationship with her sisters is the biggest threat to his control over her, and he uses every opportunity he can to undermine it. As the episode progresses, it becomes clear just how fitting the nickname JP’s sisters-in-law have for him (“The Prick,” also the title of this episode). Thankfully, the premiere quickly ensnares with its strong sense of setting (a small town on the Irish coast), its nonlinear storytelling (two story lines, set roughly six months apart), and how much I started rooting for these women to murder their brother-in-law despite being, as a general rule, against murder.

Four sisters plan a murder to save a fifth in Apple's dark comedy, adapted by and starring 'Catastrophe's' Sharon Horgan.

[Ralph Stanley](https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ralph-stanley-20160623-snap-story.html) to the Velvet Underground to Melanie) to the generally pretty setting. Its characters — barring the dead one — are reaching for the light, and the talented cast makes them easy to love. Along with the sisters’ individual storylines, intrafamilial tensions and the often farcical failures of their attempts to kill John Paul — not without some serious collateral damage, seriously felt — keep things chugging throughout the series’ length. Thomas, whose bedridden wife is about to give birth, runs their late father’s insurance business, which holds the policy on John Paul and is facing a disastrously huge payout; in order to avoid bankruptcy, he’s frantically bent on proving that the insured was murdered. Horgan plays Eva Garvey, who took charge of her siblings after the untimely death of their parents; she and her sisters are colorfully distinct, and yet they seem truly related, unusually close if sometimes at odds. That the husband begins the series in a coffin, before the story jumps back in time, suggests that they have succeeded, though questions will remain until the last of the series’ 10 episodes.

Bibi and Eva make the first (but certainly not the last) attempt on JP's life. Meanwhile, the brothers Claflin are on the case. A recap of season one, ...

Bibi tells Eva that she isn’t the one who robbed Grace of the chance to go bra shopping with their mother and, when Eva gets distracted by the thought of Kieran, Bibi tells her, “Everything happens for a reason,” and gives her big sister a hug. (Maybe because he sees literally every woman as in service to men?) He immediately sets about dropping snide comments to both Ursula and her husband, delighting in the fact that this may be something he can hold over his sister-in-law. • We do get one clue as to the circumstances of JP’s death. We know she has a husband and three kids, and we now know that those are not the things that make her feel alive. We also learn about Ursula’s extramarital relationship in “Explode a Man.” Ursula is perhaps the sister we know the least about heading into this episode. Through it all, it’s Becka that makes Matthew smile — when she’s calling, when he runs into her again at the local pub, and when he calls her in the episode’s third act to communicate that he really does care. Bibi and Eva plan to kill JP while he is staying at the family cabin for a “15k, all-terrain elite hike.” They do everything according to plan, but a restless, angry JP leaves the cabin to call Eva, presumably to yell at her for buying Grace and Blánaid Lizzo concert tickets. In both of these encounters, Matt acts as the audience surrogate, exasperated and sometimes horrified at how far Thomas will go in his search to find fraud. While it’s hinted at as particularly gruesome in the first episode of the show, we still don’t know how “The Prick” actually dies. The brothers Claflin are on the trail of the maybe-killer! When JP calls Eva a “frigid bitch” to her face for not being able to have children and “sexualizing” his daughter instead, Eva commits to Bibi’s plan. Therefore, “Explode a Man” puts a good chunk of its run time into showing how Eva and Bibi get from considering murdering JP to absolutely going for it.

Sharon Horgan headlines a twisty, comic take on the avenging-women thriller for Apple TV+.

The villain of “Bad Sisters” is John Paul Williams (Claes Bang), who works in the finance department of a Dublin architecture firm. Beyond the smart construction and tart dialogue, especially in the episodes (four of 10) written or co-written by Horgan, “Bad Sisters” succeeds because the five lead actresses convince us that they’re a family unit, sometimes for worse but mostly for better. Earlier this year, she branched out, recasting “The Shining” as a family sitcom in [“Shining Vale”](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/arts/television/big-little-lies-finale.html?searchResultPosition=4) on Starz. The most baroque of these subplots involves the loss of one of Bibi’s eyes, which requires Greene to wear a pirate-like eye patch that’s a neat visual joke in its own right. “Shining Vale” and “Bad Sisters” don’t send up the horror and avenging-women-thriller genres; they employ humor, strategically and affectionately, to give the genres new life. A despicable male is found dead, and the prime suspects are a group of women who wanted to protect one of their number from his constant oppression.

Bad Sisters are doing it for themselves in Sharon Horgan's brilliant Apple TV+ dark comedy murder mystery.

In fact, the Republic of Ireland tourist board should be thrilled as it is enough to make me want to jump on a plane (and not only to dive into the Irish Sea). [The Knick](/tv/the-knick)), as Becka, who is the standout — grappling with being the baby and the screw-up of the family. A few minor lags at the midway point don’t drag the well-paced mystery unspooling down, and overall, the 10-part series has me rooting for the Garveys and Claffins (sometimes). A meet-cute in the first episode lets Matt’s romantic side shine, and McCormack is someone to look out for as it isn’t just his big green eyes that are enchanting. The lengths he goes to are nauseating, and some of JP’s power games were excruciating to watch. It might be breezy and jokey on the surface, but resentment and compassion create a potent cocktail that adds another layer to the overall story. In persistence and desperation, Gleeson never loses the charm he shares with his actor brother (Domhnall) and father (Brendan). Out of the sisters, it is Hewson (who first shined in “The Prick” is both the premiere’s title and how the sisters refer to their brother-in-law in life and death. Eva Garvey (Horgan) is the oldest of five sisters who experienced a profound loss and have been fiercely protective of each other since. Yes, we know who died, but the absence of other facts (including how JP passed away and who did the deed) immediately pulls you into the mystery. The youngest sibling, Becka (Eve Hewson), is nearly 30, but from the outset, Eva is established as the de facto matriarch — particularly with Becka.

'Bad Sisters,' Apple TV+'s new series from Sharon Horgan, combines 'Big Little Lies' with Irish wit.

“Bad Sisters” balances two timelines, and withholding the full truth of how JP finally died automatically turns it into a whodunnit. Duff’s deft portrayal of a woman struggling to see her husband’s exploitation for what it is has Grace practically folding in on herself; watching the light dim from her eyes is as hard to watch as it should be, especially given the extremes her sisters ultimately go to in order to bring her back. From “Catastrophe” to “Motherland” to [“Shining Vale,”](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/shining-vale-review-courteney-cox-1235196467/) Horgan’s cornered an enviable market that almost always delivers, especially when it comes to the ins and outs of being a smart woman in an increasingly dumb world. As dark as the subject matter gets, the series maintains a canny eye for the ridiculous, injecting laughs in the least likely of moments. Horgan stars as Eva, the eldest of five sisters who took on a more maternal role after both their parents died in a car crash. [Sharon Horgan](https://variety.com/t/sharon-horgan/)’s attached to a show, there’s a more than decent chance that it’ll be a spiky comedy tinged with the tragedy of everyday indignities.