Why you should watch ‘Bad Sisters’, the gripping drama snubbed by the Emmys
TV comes and goes with rapid regeneration. One day, you’re enduring the final episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones and the next, you’re consuming Squid Game during the Covid-19 lockdown, latching onto whatever half-decent content you can find. The recent Emmy Awards have raked up many of these previously forgotten shows thanks to the SAG-AFTRA strikes pushing it back from its usual September slot, making the ceremony into a celebration of shallow nostalgia, where everything from season one of The Bear to the long-forgotten Star Wars series, Andor, were hot topics.
Predictably, the contemporary darlings Succession and the aforementioned Bear took home the lion’s share of prizes, including the two main awards for ‘Best Drama Series’ and ‘Best Comedy Series’, while also sweeping up in the majority of acting categories, casting shadows over an array of other worthy nominees. Indeed, Succession figuratively knocked its rivals to the floor, preventing the fantastic Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters from success in three different categories.
Arriving on the lesser-subscribed streaming service to a peppering of fanfare, the series, created by Brett Baer, Dave Finkel and Sharon Horgan, is a wonderful hybrid of genres, telling the story of the Garvey sisters who are hellbent on killing their toxic brother-in-law. With their sister, Grace, under his thumb, the group begin to plot his downfall, especially his poisonous tentacles, which begin to harm each one of their lives directly.
Played by Claes Bang, who is better known for his leading role in Ruben Östlund’s 2017 Palme d’Or winner The Square, John Paul is the villain of the piece, a man so despicably irredeemable, he would make Patrick Bateman recoil. Slimy and slithery, with the kind of toothy grin that will have you cursing your TV pixels, he is surely one of TV’s greatest villains, with his sociopathic control over life giving a great deal of gravity to the otherwise far-fetched premise.
After all, the sisters in question are not murderous criminals themselves. They are mothers and managers, brought closer together by the loss of their parents in childhood, who merely want their sister to return to her playful self. Grace, played excellently by the British screen stalwart Anne-Marie Duff, is the primary victim in all of this, a wife and sister who has been so brutally bent into shape by her relationship that she can no longer see the wood through the trees.
Crafted with comedic glee and genuine dramatic oomph, Bad Sisters, which is based on the Belgian series Clan, is the perfect synthesis of styles, penned to perfection by Dave Finkel and Brett Baer. Such makes their loss at the Emmys to the admittedly excellent Succession that much more sad, with the lack of public attention forcing Bad Sisters into obscurity rather than contemporary TV royalty.
Elsewhere, Succession also pipped it to the post for a win in the ‘Best Directing’ category, and the fabulous Sharon Horgan sadly didn’t get a look in opposite Sarah Snook of Succession fame. But it is indeed not too late to enjoy the savagely addicting drama of Bad Sisters, giving you a good excuse to indulge in Apple TV+ and enjoy Slow Horses while you’re at it.
