‘Bad Sisters’ Season 2 Is a Lesser Redux, if Still a Fun Ride: TV Review

There's only a single flash-forward in Season 2 of " Bad Sisters ," and it's the very first scene. Four of the five Garvey sisters — eldest Eva (Sharon Horgan), nurse Ursula (Eva Birthistle), one-eyed Bibi (Sarah Greene) and baby Becka (Eve Hewson) — are in a car, attempting to dispose of a dead body. Becka's face is swollen and bloody; Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), who killed her abusive husband John Paul (Claes Bang) in Season 1, is nowhere to be seen. The clip is a fairly standard tease by the structural standards of modern television, and the rest of the season proceeds in linear fashion after winding back the clock.

That makes the follow-up to this acclaimed, Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ drama a stark departure from its predecessor. Adapted by Horgan, Dave Finkel and Brett Baer from the Belgian series "Clan," the first iteration of "Bad Sisters" was split into two parallel timelines: the first in the lead-up to John Paul's death, as each Garvey gained good reasons to wish their brother-in-law dead, and the second in its wake, as insurance inspectors poked holes in the defensive siblings' cover stories. Only in the finale did the show reveal that Grace, the seemingly passive victim, had put an end to her family's torment with the help of her kindly neighbor Roger (Michael Smiley). Her sisters were protecting Grace, not just themselves.

The complex web Horgan and her collaborators wove didn't always hold together. (When half your show depends on withholding crucial information from the audience, the contortions can get excessive.) But "Bad Sisters" Season 1 was a singular piece of plot machinery custom-built around its payoff and fueled by one of the most loathsome villain performances ever put to screen. It's wise that Season 2, which was overseen solely by Horgan, doesn't attempt the same feat of architecture. It's also a concession that this slighter sequel will live in the shadow of its predecessor, even as it retains the same black comedy, Irish scenery and familial chemistry. The Rube Goldberg machine in the opening credits is now a reminder of the elaborate puzzle "Bad Sisters" once was, not an accurate indicator of the more straightforward caper to come.

The new episodes of "Bad Sisters" are nowhere near as steep a drop-off in quality as "Big Little Lies" Season 2, a fumble that turned the defining piece of movie star TV into just another middling drama. But they suffer from the same issue: far too much of its story is an extension of, or reaction to, the events of Season 1. (They also beg the same question: Whether series initially conceived with limited runs are worth forcing an expansion, regardless of their popularity.) Police discover the decomposed skeleton of John Paul's father, which the Prick — the Garveys' term of endearment for Grace's husband — had stuffed in a suitcase and tossed in a pond after keeping it in his chest freezer for a decade. That cold case reignites suspicion around Grace on the eve of her wedding to Ian (Owen McDonnell), a sensitive hunk she met in a grief support group.

Along with the investigation, this turn of events revives a familiar set of scenes. The Garveys scramble and squabble their way through criminal conspiracy like the amateurs they are, then unconvincingly stonewall anyone asking questions. This season is two episodes shorter than the first, and without the Prick as a detestable center of gravity or spotlights on each sister's backstory, the shorter runtime reflects a shorter supply of material. A shocking death early on promises to push the Garveys to new places, but ultimately puts "Bad Sisters" back in the same register of dancing around someone's fateful demise.

To the season's credit, new characters inject some of the energy the primary story does not. McDonnell is so dreamy, and so the opposite of Bang's sneering, sadistic rapist, that we don't question his rapid integration into the Garvey clan until they do. Shaw, McDonnell's former "Killing Eve" castmate, is phenomenal as Roger's sister Angelica, the holier-than-thou facilitator of Grace's support group. A pious succubus who attaches herself to the unfortunate and lords her righteousness over them, Angelica inherits John Paul's role of symbolizing the moral hypocrisy of Ireland's dominant Catholic church. Finally, Thaddea Graham joins the cast as Detective Houlihan, an overeager police woman whose dogged determination makes her a worthy foe for the Garveys, and an inconvenience for her checked-out partner Inspector Loftus (Barry Ward).

A notable exception to this expanding roster is Grace's daughter Blánaid (Saise Quinn), now a teenager. Blánaid is at the center of the season's conflicts, but the scripts treat her as a passive object to be fought over in a tug-of-war between the sisters and Angelica, who seeks to insert herself into the vacuum left by her parent's death. Blánaid is now old enough to have her own personality and opinions, but apart from some standard adolescent angst, the first time she expresses any specific thoughts on the series' events is in this season's final scene. It's a rare blind spot for a show that otherwise delights in the complexities of its female characters.

Even a lesser version of "Bad Sisters" is an enjoyable watch, from the lush County Dublin seaside to the bitchy sniping that only underscores the Garveys' closeness. The characters themselves can get caught up in the fun; the police seem to lose interest in the suitcase-bound body that incites all the action, and when Bibi's wife accuses her of not caring about their attempts to conceive, it's hard to disagree based on allotted screen time. The sisters' spiraling chaos has a momentum of its own, and while a redux may not match the achievement of the original, it can still channel much of the appeal.

The first two episodes of "Bad Sisters" Season 2 are now streaming on Apple TV+, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Wednesdays.