Bad Sisters season two: Sharon Horgan on how plans changed and teases what to expect

There wasn’t meant to be a second season of Irish black comedy Bad Sisters.

The series about a group of sisters plotting to kill their abusive brother-in-law, nicknamed The Prick, was adapted by multi-hyphenate talent Sharon Horgan from a Flemish miniseries.

There had been an ending, and it was one of those neat, bow-tied ones. The Prick was vanquished, Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) had escaped a horrid, controlling man, and the sisters would get to pal around and live out the rest of their lives.

Except, that’s not really how real life works, and Horgan had started to think about where the story could go while she was still in production on what is now the first season of Bad Sisters. She parked those ideas because that hadn’t been the plan.

Much like how the Garvey sisters’ best-laid plans never quite eventuated as expected, neither did Horgan’s. Bad Sisters was a huge hit, with audiences and critics and Apple was keen for more.

“We put together a writers’ room and we were like, ‘Oh, well actually there could be something here’ that really felt like the right thing to do in terms of showing the ongoing effects of trauma,” Horgan told The Nightly.

“A woman like Grace, who loved that man for so many years, who was abused and damaged, is not just going to spring back. We had a responsibility to show the reality of that story and to show how hard it is to move on.

“There’s a lot of shame attached to being in something like that, and killing the father of your child, and the impact on the whole family.

The aftermath seemed to me to be as interesting as the crimes, albeit in a different way.

So, the Garveys — Grace, Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene) and Becka (Eve Hewson) — are back and it’s two years later and the consequences of their actions are playing out in dramatic ways.

The first two episodes will be released on premiere day, at the end of which is a momentous plot turn that changes the dynamics of the characters’ relationships. It’s a bold decision, and Horgan admitted she had cold feet about it even after it was made.

“A part of the DNA of the show is the sisterly joy and we were saying, ‘Can we really do something like that and continue with the tone?’,” she wondered.

Horgan and the writers made sure they could nail the balance between the darker second season with those comedic moments that gave Bad Sisters its bite.

“I don’t want to bum everyone out and then continue to bum them out,” she said. “I wanted to shock the f..k out of people and then for the story to pick everyone up and carry them off again.”

There’s a line that Horgan’s character, Eva, delivers at the start of the season. She may deliver it casually, at a regular volume, but the meaning behind it is more like a primal scream.

Eva says, “I don’t have a problem with the rules, I have a problem with the people who make the rules”.

While that sentiment would certainly apply to the not-so-dearly departed The Prick, it is the foundation for the second season too.

“The focus will become clearer as you move through the series because the rule makers in this case, the cops, the institution, the sort of people who are there to protect us, and we can’t trust them,” Horgan explained.

Women, we’ve been let down too many times. So, it’s even more pertinent.

“It comes out in a different way and you have to follow the story right through to the end to really see what she meant and how the system fails women like Grace.”

There is one person in the system who may prove to be the antidote, a young detective named Una Houlihan (Thaddea Graham).

Determined, crazy smart and underestimated, she could be antagonist or ally to the Garveys when she starts to look into the deaths that surround the sisters, but to Horgan, she’s the kind of person who could change the institution but only if they’re let in and “allowed to be the best that they can be”.

Another newcomer is the formidable Fiona Shaw, who plays former neighbour Roger’s sister Angelica. Seemingly a good and pious woman who is adding value to her community, Angelica is exactly the type of person who always has another meaning to her words.

Shaw’s presence on set would make the actors break character, so entranced they were with her performance.

“We were so excited to have her, and it put such a responsibility on me,” Horgan recalled.

“I don’t want to give Fiona Shaw something that wasn’t worthy of her stature and talents, and she was so up for it that it made us raise our game because we wanted Angelica to be fully rounded with a past.

“That character has more hidden than any of them.”

Taking the story further than the original series and introducing these new characters gave Horgan a stronger sense of ownership over the show.

“I certainly felt like Bad Sisters was ours because we poured our hearts and souls into it, but you’re still using the template of a show that exists and that (Flemish show creator) Malin (Sarah Gozin) dreamt up in her head.

“I’ve always felt pride in it, but now I do feel a little more connected to it.”

At the heart of it, Bad Sisters will always be about the fabulous Garvey girls and all their dramas.

Horgan added, “Even when they’re plotting to freeze a man to death and they’re all standing there in their fur coats, you still really love them.”

Bad Sisters season two is streaming on Apple TV+ with a two-episode premiere and then new chapters weekly