Bad Sisters was perfect the first time. This sequel has to work hard

Bad Sisters
Apple TV+
★★★½

The second season of Apple’s hit Irish family-murder-drama-comedy (famurdramedy?) opens with a literal cliffhanger: four of the five Garvey sisters are in a car teetering on the edge of a seaside precipice.

But the way they screech in panic, and in unison, as the boot pops open of its own accord is oddly reassuring: we may be dealing with matters of life and death here, but nothing should be taken too seriously.

The Garvey clan returns for a second season of Bad Sisters.Credit: Apple TV+

It takes until the last of its eight episodes for Bad Sisters to reveal what is in that boot and how it got there. Along the way you might occasionally wonder why we’re even here at all; season one was just so perfectly formed and complete in itself that any more is surely superfluous. But by the end of its arc, Bad Sisters Mk II has just about earned its right to exist.

The immensely gifted Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe and, as writer, Divorce and Motherland) is back as writer-producer and crafter of this season’s story (the first season was adapted from the Danish series Clan), and as eldest sister Eva.

Michael Smiley and Fiona Shaw as Roger and Angelica Collins.Credit: Apple TV+

There are moments when it feels she’s put her character too much at the centre of things, to the detriment of the others: Anna-Marie Duff as Grace, whose abusive husband John Paul (Claes Bang) was murdered in season one; Eva Birthistle as recently divorced nurse Ursula; Sarah Greene as gay mother and pro poker player, Bibi; and Eve Hewson as the baby of the brood, Becka. But as ostensibly the most sensible of the clan, Eva is necessarily at the centre of things.

Two years after the events of season one, we find Grace on the up, about to marry Ian (Owen McDonell), a man seemingly as kind and considerate as John Paul was selfish and controlling.

But when former neighbour Roger (Michael Smiley) re-enters her world with his God-bothering sister Angelica (Fiona Shaw) in tow, the past begins to feel uncomfortably close. And when the body of her ex-husband’s father turns up in a suitcase, past transgressions quickly come crashing in.

The world’s laziest police detective, Fergal Loftus (Barry Ward), is soon and reluctantly back on the Garvey case, with an eager puppy of a new sidekick called Houlihan (Thaddea Graham) driving him on, though he’d prefer to be on the driving range. And with Angelica’s poisonously pious mind nipping away at loose ends, it’s inevitable that the loosely bound quilt of lies the Garveys have crafted will unravel.

There are twists and surprises in the plotting, and moments of truth and pain in the interpersonal dynamics, but on its second spin Bad Sisters can’t quite recapture the perfect balance of heart and humour and horror that made the first so compelling.

That it has guilt and shame at the centre of everything feels right – this is, after all, a show about Irish Catholics, murder and cover-ups. But constantly referencing the events of that first season only serves to remind us how good and fresh it was, and to highlight how derivative and dependent on its predecessor this one is by comparison.

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