A monstrous brother-in-law, several chaotic murder attempts and five sisters who will do anything to protect each other. Come the finale of season 1 of Apple Original series Bad Sisters, the Garveys may have breathed a sigh of relief that their darkest secrets were finally buried for good – but now they’re about to find out that some things just won’t rest in peace.
Quick take: Season 2 is set two years after John Paul met his timely demise, and the Garvey sisters are focusing on happier times with a wedding in the family. But it’s too good to be true, and a shocking discovery turns their world upside down... again.
Don’t miss: Some fresh faces join the cast this time around, including Fiona Shaw as a nosy neighbour who takes great delight in trying to unearth the sisters’ secrets, Thaddea Graham as a young by-the-book detective and Barry Ward as her jaded supervisor.
When it’s happening: New episodes of season 2 drop Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
We spoke to Sharon Horgan, the show’s co-creator who plays eldest sibling Eva, about how a second season came about and what it is about the Garveys that people find so magnetic.
Season 1 of Bad Sisters was such a deeply satisfying viewing experience, and in many ways it felt self-contained. Why a second season?
It felt weird to not at least think about what could happen if we did do a second season. For me it was about the aftermath…you don’t just spring back and life doesn’t just continue as normal.
The challenge is finding a gripping enough story to replace what went before. The thing that works with Bad Sisters isn’t just the characters, it’s the propulsive engine of the thriller and the high jinks. I think the challenge for me was keeping it recognisable but making it fresh.
In the first season it wasn’t a whodunnit but a howdunnit – the second season is much more about the audience finding out who it could possibly be.
John Paul is so obviously a monster, even before you know the full extent of what he’s done. How do you replace an antagonist like that in season 2?
The great thing about John Paul was that, yes, he was a monster, but he was also an idiot! He was a complex character who wasn’t just there as a villain. So it’s been about replacing that, bringing that interesting complexity to our new characters. And the ghost of him exists. Every choice the sisters made comes back to haunt them in the second season.
Was it a challenge as a writer to have your protagonists plotting to do something inherently wrong, while also trying to keep the audience on their side?
It wasn’t a problem! For the most part, everyone recognised a version of John Paul in their lives. The wish fulfilment of getting to kill someone like that was keenly felt. For me, it was the believability of it and making sure these women felt like women you recognised, doing something terrible but not feeling like they had much choice.
The Forty Foot swimming spot in Dublin becomes a central meeting point for the sisters. How was that experience?
Even before the show was green-lit, I remember going to the Forty Foot and feeling like this was an incredibly special place and noticing that there were these groups of women swimming and chatting away in this freezing cold water and thinking, ‘This is where you should plan a murder!’ I loved how there’s nowhere like it in the world and it felt very singular and like we were introducing an audience worldwide to somewhere that’s so Irish and so revered.