South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Horgan at home with twisty whodunit
When “Catastrophe” came to an end three years ago, Sharon Horgan was bereft.
“I had real grief,” said the writer-actor-producer during a recent interview. “I know that sounds dramatic, but we were so close and so in it for five years.” The Amazon Prime Video series, which took an unflinchingly honest look at the ups and downs of long-term commitment, was inspired by her own headlong dive into marriage and motherhood.
Shortly after it concluded — with an ambiguous finale that left the fate of the main characters open to interpretation — Horgan signed a firstlook deal with Apple TV+.
After working on something so all-consuming for so long, “I knew I had to find something that I could completely fall in love with” at her new professional home, Horgan said.
That passion project ultimately came from an unusual place: Belgium.
Her first creation for the streaming service is “Bad Sisters,” a darkly comic thriller based on a Flemish series called “Clan.” Set near Dublin, the 10-episode adaptation follows the tightknit Garvey sisters, led by eldest sibling Eva (Horgan), who share a deep bond informed by the trauma of losing their parents at a young age.
Fiercely protective of each other, four of the sisters despise their awful brother-in-law, John Paul, who is married to the timid Grace (Anne-Marie Duff ), and their dark jokes about killing him quickly escalate into an actual murder plot. But he proves surprisingly adept at evading death, and their mission inflicts unexpected collateral damage.
With wine-swilling female conspirators
(played by Eve Hewson and Sarah Greene, among others) and a picturesque coastal setting, the series is like “Big Little Lies” in an Irish brogue.
In some ways “Bad Sisters,” now streaming, is a return to familiar territory for Horgan, who grew up in County Meath, near Dublin, in a family of five children. But as a plot-driven murder mystery adapted from a foreign-language TV series, it also presented an intriguing challenge.
Through her company, Merman, Horgan has established a reputation for producing acerbic, female-driven comedies, including “Motherland,” about a clique of frazzled London parents; “Frayed,” about a posh London housewife who returns to her backwater Australian hometown after her husband’s death; and “This Way Up,” about an Irish woman recovering from a
nervous breakdown.
“I was getting into a comfortable British-sitcom groove,” said Horgan, 52. “I was getting nervous about repeating myself. At some point, people are gonna go, ‘Well, it’s versions of the same thing.’ ”
Now, after more than two years toiling on “Bad Sisters,” she is at home with a twist-filled whodunit. She’s working on something “very talky and (Richard) Linklateresque,” she said. “And as I’m writing it, I’m like, ‘Where’s the murders?’ ”
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