WARNING: Contains spoilers for Bad Sisters.Bad Sisters on AppleTV+ subverts one of the oldest murder mystery tropes. The black comedy is adapted from the Belgian TV series The Out-Laws by Catastrophe‘s Sharon Horgan, who also stars as Eva Garvey, one of four sisters who may have murdered John Paul (Claes Bang), the husband of fifth sister Grace (Anne-Marie Duff). The series begins with Grace making preparations for John Paul’s funeral, and flashes back to the events leading up to his death.
In true murder mystery fashion, these flashbacks give each of the Garvey sisters a motive for murdering John Paul. On top of his oppressive and belittling relationship with his wife Grace, it’s implied that John Paul has been responsible for Bibi (Sarah Greene) losing an eye, and deliberately sets out to reveal Urusula’s (Eva Birthistle) extramarital affair and beat Eva to a promotion at the office they both work at. Claes Bang plays his Bad Sisters role of John Paul with quiet malevolence, making the character an utterly odious monster, which means that the audience is rooting for the sisters as they embark on their murderous plot.
For years, the sisters have watched John Paul psychologically abuse his wife Grace, to the point that she becomes less and less a part of their close-knit family unit. After a particularly spiteful ploy to stop Grace from attending a traditional Christmas Day swim, the sisters begin fantasizing about murdering John Paul. Bibi and Eva are the first sisters to take decisive action, engineering a devastating gas explosion that John Paul evades by leaving the cabin to make a furious phone call to Eva. As the series continues, the other sisters also become involved in the plot. Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters is therefore less of a “whodunnit” and more of a “howdunnit”, as the method of John Paul’s dispatch is the true mystery of Bad Sisters.
Bad Sisters Is A “Howdunnit” Not A Whodunnit: Why That’s Perfect
The most refreshing thing about Bad Sisters is that Claes Bang is playing a truly monstrous character, in episode 3 it’s even revealed that John Paul’s mother doesn’t even like him that much. In an era of complex protagonists in prestige TV drama, it’s bracing for audiences to be faced with an unapologetically vile character like John Paul. His coercive control of Grace and the way he treats her sisters show him to be a deeply unpleasant misogynist, and there’s an emotional catharsis to be had in waiting for him to meet his fate. Much of the comedy in the Apple TV Original movie comes from the failed attempts to murder him, such as when a tearful Grace phones her sisters to reveal the poisoning of their beloved dog following a comic mishap involving a spiked piece of liver.
Unlike many murder mysteries, the police aren’t investigating the death of John Paul, having seemingly concluded there was no foul play. Instead, Claffin & Sons’ insurance agents Tom (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack) are desperate to prove John Paul was murdered, so they don’t have to pay out a life insurance policy that will bankrupt them. The fact that the “how” rather than the “who” is the primary focus of Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters gives the show both its rich black comedy and a suitable degree of tension. In each scene where the sisters enact one of their murderous fantasies against John Paul, there’s tension as the audience is on tenterhooks to find out if this is a successful attempt. That tension is then punctured by a blackly comic, cathartic laugh when the attempt goes badly, hilariously wrong, perfectly subverting the oldest murder mystery trope in the process, as it firmly puts the audience on the side of the murderers.
