Bad Sisters Season 2 Review: Apple TV’s Irish Dark Comedy Returns

Bad Sisters Season 2 faces an impossible challenge: following a first season that was essentially perfect. The Garvey sisters — Eva (Sharon Horgan), Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene), and Becka (Eve Hewson) — are back, and their murder of abusive brother-in-law John Paul (Claes Bang) continues to cast a long shadow over their lives. A new threat emerges in the form of someone who knows what they did, and the season becomes a tense examination of whether the sisters’ bond can survive the weight of their shared secret.

How We Reviewed: Our assessment is based on viewing all available episodes before publishing and comparison with the show’s prior seasons and genre benchmarks. Ratings reflect full-season viewing, critical analysis, and production quality assessment. No sponsorship or affiliate relationship influenced our selections.

The Aftermath

The five leads remain the show’s greatest asset. Sharon Horgan’s Eva carries the guilt most heavily, isolating herself from the family while spiraling into self-destructive behavior that threatens to expose them all. Anne-Marie Duff’s Grace, the sister who suffered most under John Paul’s abuse, is tentatively rebuilding her life with a new relationship that brings its own complications and vulnerabilities. Sarah Greene’s Bibi channels her anger into protectiveness, becoming the family’s enforcer in ways that mirror the violence they committed. Eve Hewson’s Becka is the wild card whose impulsive decisions create new complications that ripple through every episode. Eva Birthistle’s Ursula holds the middle ground, trying to maintain normalcy for her family while the ground shifts beneath her.

The dynamic between the sisters — protective, combative, hilarious, and deeply loving — is as beautifully drawn as ever. The show’s ability to shift between laugh-out-loud comedy and genuine menace without breaking stride remains remarkable. A scene where the five sisters argue over a dinner table can be simultaneously the funniest and most tense moment in an episode, and the writing trusts the audience to hold both emotions at once.

The New Threat

The new antagonist brings pressure that threatens to crack the sisters’ united front. Without spoiling the identity, the person leverages knowledge of the murder to exploit the Garvey family, and the sisters must decide how far they are willing to go to protect their secret a second time. This creates moral territory that is murkier than Season 1’s — killing an abuser is one thing; what do you do about someone who simply knows the truth?

The escalation is handled with the kind of slow-burn precision that made the first season so addictive. Each episode tightens the screws, and the show finds surprising ways to complicate the sisters’ unity. Old resentments surface under pressure, alliances within the family shift, and the question of whether any of them would sacrifice another to save herself gives the season a psychological edge that the first season did not need.

What Works and What Doesn’t

Season 2 lacks the propulsive “will they or won’t they kill him” drive of the first season, and the new antagonist cannot match the visceral loathing that Claes Bang inspired as John Paul. But the show compensates with deeper character work and a more nuanced exploration of guilt, complicity, and the aftermath of violence. The show is asking a harder question this time: what does it mean to get away with something terrible, and can you ever truly be free of it?

The Irish setting remains gorgeous, the writing is sharp, and the performances are uniformly excellent. The show’s Dublin locations are shot with an affection that makes the city feel like a sixth sister — beautiful, complicated, and capable of turning on you without warning. The supporting cast, particularly the new characters introduced to apply pressure on the Garveys, are well-drawn and unpredictable.

The show understands that the most interesting question is not whether the sisters will get away with murder but what getting away with it does to them as individuals and as a family.

Rating: 7.5/10

For more Apple TV Plus content, see the Apple TV Plus Best Shows Guide and the Best Comedy Shows Streaming in 2025.