Summary
Bad Sisters Season 2 gets off to a decent start in Episodes 1 and 2, but it still has a long way to go to justify itself after how well the first season ended.
The first season of Bad Sisters was very good, but crucially it ended. That’s to say that it had a real, satisfying conclusion, with all of the loose ends (seemingly) tied up, and very little reason for a continuation. That gives Season 2 a lot to do; Episodes 1 and 2, “Good Sisters” and “Penance”, provide a couple of intriguing new plot threads and culminate in a very significant development, but the two-part premiere does feel a little strained, and perhaps indicates that the Apple TV+ series should have left things where they were.
You can tell immediately that Sharon Horgan and her writing team have done everything in their power to make this follow-up story worthwhile, and that includes adding some additional complexity and ambiguity to the elements of Season 1’s murder that are dredged up again here. Will it be enough? I’ll have a better answer to that down the line. But there’s plenty to be getting on with in the meantime.
Unearthing the Past
Even though it’s set two years on, Bad Sisters Season 2 is nonetheless very defined by the past. To rehash, in the first season, Grace killed her abusive husband JP with the help of her neighbor Roger. In Episode 1 of the new season, JP’s father’s dismembered corpse is pulled from a pond, reopening the case for Fergal Lofthus and his overeager new partner Una Houlihan.
And history might be repeating itself. Grace has just married Ian, who seems to be JP’s polar opposite, but when Roger begins getting too close and considering going to the Garda, she confesses to Ian what she did to JP. Soon after, he disappears, and in the first two episodes at least, it’s unclear whether or not Grace has killed him. Her sisters suspect she might have.
It doesn’t help that Roger is living with his sister, Angelica, an extremely pious and equally nosy woman who wastes no time digging for clues as to what Roger and Grace are hiding.
A United Front
Anne-Marie Duff, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson and Sharon Horgan in Bad Sisters | Image via Apple TV+
In Episodes 1 and 2 of Bad Sisters Season 2, almost all of the focus is on Grace, which leaves the other sisters feeling a little short-changed. They all have their own issues – of particular note, Bibi and her wife are trying IVF, which is putting a strain on them – but they’re forced to shelve any personal subplots to form a united front for Grace and ensure that she isn’t going to get herself – or indeed them – arrested.
This means a lot of the first two episodes is spent with all of the main characters in Grace’s house, having whispered conversations that Blanaid has definitely heard at least some of, and trying to figure out why Ian’s phone is still in the house and there’s blood on a shirt in the washing machine.
It’s funny that the sisters are reflexively cleaning up after a crime that they don’t know has happened, but the show works better, I find, when it’s playing less coy. Having all the Garvey sisters be none the wiser about what’s really going on wastes too much time on speculation that could be spent on the group all dealing with the same problem, which is where their interpersonal dynamics feel strongest. Grace is cagey in this premiere, and her overblown public meltdowns make the fact she’s hiding something so obvious to everyone that it’s a wonder her sisters are being as patient as they are.
Grace’s Fate
The Bad Sisters Season 2 premiere takes quite a sudden lurch into new dramatic territory at the end of Episode 2, when it seems very much like Grace dies in a car crash.
I say “seems” because you can never be too sure in a show like this, but that’s certainly the implication. The emotional fallout from this will be for subsequent episodes to unpack, but it’ll also mean that the police’s suspicions, not to mention Angelica’s, will now fall to the rest of the Garvey clan – and they don’t even know what Grace was really up to.
That’s a compelling enough hook for a second season but there are lots of ways it could go wrong. I hope it doesn’t since I really do enjoy this show and its cast, but most stories would have been lucky to end as well as this one did in the first season. Sometimes, it’s better to leave it there.
