Not everything needs a second season.
“Bad Sisters,” created by Sharon Horgan, Brett Baer, and Dave Finkel, and based on the Belgian series “Clan,” was one such series, neatly wrapping up the eponymous Garvey sisters’ story with ten episodes that premiered on Apple TV+ in 2022.
But of those many shows that should have left well enough alone, a rare few manage to pull off that second installment (if not more beyond that) with — if not resounding success, then aplomb. “Bad Sisters” didn’t need a second season, but Horgan and her team execute the near-impossible task of picking up, building out, and smartly continuing the story, even if Season 1 remains superior.
Season 2 catches up with the sisters — Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson) — a few years after the other four planned to kill Grace’s husband, only for her to end up killing him herself. Life without “the Prick” agrees with Grace and daughter Blanaid (Saise Quinn), until the nosy Angelica (Fiona Shaw) starts digging up the past.
Angelica is one of a handful of new players in the “Bad Sisters” world; there’s also Grace’s new beau Ian (Owen McDonnell), detective inspector Leftus (Barry Ward), his partner Houlihan (Thaddea Graham), and Becka’s new love interest Joe (Peter Clafley). Shaw’s character is the only one slightly shoehorned in — she plays the sister of Roger (Michael Smiley), Grace’s kind neighbor from Season 1 — but she’s also Fiona Shaw and she’s feasting, so it doesn’t feel worth a complaint. The others fill in the missing years and gaps from Season 1, where the main murder investigation was conducted by an insurance company.
In Season 1, the audience at least knew who died before the show pieced together how it happened and the Claflin brothers (Daryl McCormack and Brian Gleeson) tried to catch up. Season 2 opens with Eva, Ursula, Bibi, and an injured Becka driving what appears to be a dead body to the edge of a cliff — and spends the next nine episodes revealing who, how, and why. Where Season 1 spent necessary time establishing who everyone was and how they fit in, Season 2 is forced to commence at a faster clip and rely heavily on plot twists in lieu of character work. Gone is the quirky flashback device that appears to rewind or fast forward through frames of time; in its place, the story spins circles around the same questions and character beats for longer than necessary (even with nine episodes instead of ten). Each sister’s arc for the season can be more or less summed up in one sentence that is stretched out into too many scenes, beats, and moments where they get flustered and exit a conversation mid-thought.
But man, the sisters are sister-ing. Horgan, Birthistle, Greene, and Hewson in particular crafted a rock-solid dynamic in Season 1 that continues here without missing a beat. There are more scenes with all of them together — again, a shift from Season 1’s calmer pacing, in which different combinations of sisters revealed their interpersonal relationships while staying true to the reality of sibling dynamics. But with one murder under wraps, another ostensibly on the horizon, and the one they attempted (over and over), you can’t fault the Garveys for wanting to maintain a strong, united front.
“Bad Sisters” still makes for a quality week-to-week viewing experience, with new mysteries and cliffhangers and cast members to appreciate. Ward and Graham’s odd-couple police work showcases both actors, and while there’s notably less comedy than in Season 1, sight gags and punchlines are diffused throughout. It would be a spoiler to say whether Season 2’s conclusion is open-ended, so for now suffice it to say that these sisters are welcome any time they come back.
Grade: B-
“Bad Sisters” Season 2 Episodes 1 and 2 are now streaming, with new episodes every Wednesday (and the finale on Monday, December 23).
