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Must Watch reviews: Bad Sisters

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan join Clare McDonnell to review the second season of Bad Sisters on Apple TV+.

Written and starring Sharon Haugen from Channel 4’s Catastrophe, the newest series of Bad Sisters follows the lives of the Garvey sisters two years after the “accidental death” of Grace’s abusive husband.

The sisters may have moved on but when past truths resurface, the ladies are thrust back into the spotlight with suspicions and lies circling overhead.

What do the Must Watch Reviewers think of Bad Sisters?

Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell share what they think about Bad Sisters.

Clare: “Did you love it, Hayley?”

Now it's just another TV show about a bad man鈥

Hayley: “I did not. I loved Bad Sisters season one. It was a sensitive portrayal of domestic abuse and how it can ruin a person psychologically. It was an incredibly hard watch. If you've experienced that controlling behaviour, as I have, it was a particularly hard thing to watch because it was so perfectly observed. It was like someone in that writing room had lived it - I felt that.

“This season, it just feels like it's turning on its own characters. It's making them seem guilty and insane and pathetic. I think it's partly because they didn't know where to go with it because the series that it was based on was [from a Flemish production team] and that one, tellingly, I think, didn't have a second season.

“This one did because it was this huge phenomenon. But the main themes [in this new series] are guilt and penance, which is enormously Catholic, and can be funny if you've been brought up in a Catholic family, as I have, so of course, that's where it would go next.

“But it's like we couldn't have the win of the first series without the guilt and penance. All of this is embedded in the Irish-ness of the show. But by making this the focus, it really made it a different thing because it was such an incredibly tight portrayal of something true.

“I feel like we should pretend that Bad Sisters lasted one perfect, heart-destroying season of a show that was funny and somehow had this accurate portrayal of coercive control. It’s the most accurate one I've ever seen on TV.

“I don't want to say that this is an outright bad show because it isn't. The performances are excellent, the chemistry between the sisters feels really real. But this was a show that was saying something, and it was exceptional and it was tight and it was funny and now it's just another TV show about a bad man”.

Apple TV+

Scott: “I agree with Hayley. I think with season one, it was so good. Like Hayley said, it was based off a Flemish TV series, and that, I don't even know what happens, but in the final episode, it had that great payoff, it had that unexpected twist, and it also tied up absolutely everything.

“I feel that bizarrely, because of season two, instead of just going and taking it to a different location with perhaps different characters, which maybe it should have done, it decided to pick up directly where it left off.

“So you feel the desperate untangling of the nice bow that had been tied up at the end of the previous episode. I felt myself being like ‘no, don't do that because that undoes that now, and the payoff is now no longer there because it feels as if the show is unravelling”.

Apple TV+

“There were still good performances in it. They've got a new investigator, Thaddea Graham, who I think is also a great addition here”.

It made me, not long after watching it, want to stop鈥

Hayley: “We had her on Must Watch once, she was very funny”.

Scott: “Fiona Shaw is also great. You can tell that she's in there with an ulterior motive. We don't really know what she's going to be doing to start off with. But this is the thing about a one-series wonder - you just want it to be left like that.

“Unfortunately it made me, not long after watching it, want to stop because I didn't want to unravel what made the first series so good for me.

Clare: “I love the first series and I haven't watched much of this one. I suppose all I would ask is, I guess what they thought is well, ‘is there mileage in exploring the guilt that comes with the way the first series ended?’ because you have to live with that”.

Hayley: “There would be scope and I can see why it worked as a pitch. But I've watched the whole series now, and there was just too much stuff going on. It's too messy. It's a farce, again, but the first series had so much to say. It wasn't just about trying to murder a bad man. It was so accurate and scary”.

Clare: “So is it a Must Watch, guys?”

Scott: “Sadly not for me”.

Clare: “Oh, what a shame”.

You can watch the first three episodes of Bad Sisters series two on Apply TV+ now, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday.

All episodes of series one are available to watch there too.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

This week, the team reviewed Dune: Prophecy and Boybands Forever.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on 成人快手 Sounds.

Your Reviews

As always, we like to include your reviews - on shows you love, loathe or lament.

Message @bbc5live on social media using the hashtag #bbcmustwatch or email mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

Lucan

It seems Aly didn’t agree with the team's review of Lucan on 成人快手 iPlayer - which they reviewed last week.

I cannot disagree more about the review of Lucan. What surprised me most was how no one mentioned what the programme was like for the other protagonist, the 84-year-old Buddhist monk. Doorstepped and duped by two strangers filming him without his knowledge. Asking questions that he clearly did not understand. I found it very uncomfortable to watch. It all felt exploitative by the producers.

And Tony thought it could have been a lot shorter…

Lucan could have been distilled into 1 programme by asking the monk to take a DNA test. It's absolutely ridiculous

Dune: Prophecy

Andy texted the show to share his review of the TV-spin off, Dune Prophecy…

Dune is not science fiction. It's sword and sorcery, magic and woo. It's already been 3 sets of very dull films. I don't know why this nonsense still keeps getting remade. There is so much better literary science fiction out there.