I'm writing a very unusual review for "Bad Sisters," because it's a show where I didn't finish watching all the episodes of the first season. I watched four, and then skipped ahead to watch the ending. Part of this was because I ran out of time, having only a limited window of access to Apple TV+. Part of this was because I was so worked up by those first four episodes, I couldn't take the suspense. I was starting to feel a serious need to track down Claes Bang and murder him myself. The fact that his character was already dead made no difference.
"Bad Sisters" is about the five Garvey sisters, who all live near each other in Dublin. The second oldest, Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), is a reticent woman who was married to a man named Jean Paul (Bang), the bane of her life and everyone around him. He was emotionally abusive, manipulative, self-righteous, vindictive, petty, small-minded, and had a talent for screwing people over. From oldest to youngest, Grace's sisters are Eva (Sharon Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson). All of them have a reason to hate Jean Paul enough to kill him, and thus all of them are suspects. The police are not investigating what they believe to be an accident, but insurance agents Tom (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack), trying to avoid a payout, are keen on changing the record.
Most of the series is structured as a series of flashbacks to how Jean Paul ran afoul of each of the sisters, and a few other characters, showing us the reasons why everyone would have wanted him dead.
I figured out the answer to the big mystery pretty early on, but the series isn't really about this. Rather, it's an opportunity for some great thrills and dark comedy. All the actresses in the cast are great, and the chemistry among them is a lot of fun as they plot against their brother-in-law. However, Claes Bang is so insufferable as Jean Paul, aka JP, aka The Prick, I got really emotionally invested in his downfall to an extent that's probably not healthy. A big part of the show is red herrings and near misses, and I was getting more and more worked up as Jean Paul kept surviving each flashback. There was no way I was going to stand six more episodes of him not being dead, so I skipped ahead to the payoff. "Bad Sisters" is a very enjoyable series, but I don't regret doing this.
I did, however, finish the six episode miniseries "Black Bird." Developed and largely written by frequent Clint Eastwood collaborator Denis Lehane, "Black Bird" follows a young convict named Jimmy Keene (Taron Edgerton), who is offered a deal to commute his ten year prison sentence if he'll help get information out of a fellow prisoner, Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), who is believed to be a serial murderer and rapist. Keene's father is played by Ray Liotta in one of his final screen roles. The bulk of the series is spent with Keene and Hall in a prison built for mentally disturbed offenders.
Edgerton does a good job as Keene, but the reason to watch "Black Bird" is Paul Walter Hauser's performance. Larry Hall is no Hannibal Lecter, but he's plenty formidable on his own terms. His behavior can be unsophisticated and childish, but he's extremely careful and understands that his silence is his greatest asset. Hauser manages to give him a fascinating mix of repulsive and sympathetic traits, and keep us guessing for a very long time as to whether Larry Hall is actually a monster or not. It takes Keene multiple episodes to get past Hall's defenses and work out what makes him tick, but it never feels like the show is stalling for time. As you might expect, the show's content gets very dark, and potentially upsetting, roughly on par with David Fincher's "Manhunter" series.
"Black Bird" strikes me as one of the better recent pieces of serial killer fiction. It's a strong character study of Larry Hall, and it presents a far bleaker and more realistic picture of the limits of the criminal justice system than most. Hall's biggest advantage is knowing how to work the system, and Keene is put in far more danger by the negligence of his handlers than anything that Hall does. It was also a good choice to have Keene's father as his biggest motivator for getting out of prison, instead of a typical love interest. The focus on all masculine relationships is unusual, but important for this story, which turns out to be less about catching a killer, and more about the importance of empathy - even for the worst of us.
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