Sharon Horgan and co. kills it with Apple TV's 'Bad Sisters'

No matter what way you want to slice it, men are an endangered species in 'Bad Sisters'.

In Sharon Horgan's ensemble black comedy, men are presented in various shapes and sizes, but they're so often on the short end of the rope and playing off the back foot. Brian Gleeson's harried, Peter Falk-esque insurance man is beset with a pregnant wife played by Seana Kerslake, a failing business, a ridiculously good-looking half-brother played by Daryl McCormack, and an eye-watering life insurance policy he'll have to pay out to Anne-Marie Duff. The catch? He thinks the death in question - that of Claes Bang - isn't quite so innocuous as it seems.

Told in alternating timelines, 'Bad Sisters' goes to great lengths to not only justify the death of Claes Bang's character, but actively make you an accessory to it. In every episode, we see how he intersects with the Garvey sisters - that's Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson, his on-screen wife Anne-Marie Duff, and Sharon Horgan - and more pointedly, how he's trying to manipulate them all. The conniving bastard that he is, he's got some form of dirt on all of them and that's not even starting with how he's trying to control his own wife and daughter too.

What gives 'Bad Sisters' its jolt of life is the collection of characters assembled. Sarah Greene's constantly pissed off (and for good reason), Eva Birthistle is trying to juggle being the quote-unquote perfect housewife and an affair, Sharon Horgan is dealing with her own trauma and handling it by drinking, and Eve Hewson plays the aimless youngster of the troupe. In each character alone, there's a rich backstory and ample depth to them that could power an entire season, let alone one single episode. Moreover, the dynamic between them all has such a force of authenticity that you'd quite easily believe they're actually sisters. They bicker over pointless things, and they snipe at each other when they're catty, but there's an unspoken bond that is stronger than steel and provides an emotional reality for the absurdist moments of the show.

It's a light and breezy affair, even though it's about a group of sisters plotting to kill their brother-in-law. At any point in 'Bad Sisters', the show could easily descend into a bleak psychological drama about coercive control and feminine servitude, not to mention cleverly capturing relationship dynamics in Irish society. Placed right next to this is a scene where a dog gets unintentionally murdered by the Garvey sisters. There are so many "you probably shouldn't be laughing at this" moments in 'Bad Sisters', to the point where you're entirely sure that the writers' room is on a watch-list somewhere for some of the stuff they've come up with.

If there's a complaint to be made about 'Bad Sisters', it's that it spends a little too long getting to the point and the procedural elements of the show - namely, Brian Gleeson and Daryl McCormack rifling through rubbish - slow it down. Still, as killer comedies go, this one cuts through.