Entertainment
'Bad Sisters' creator Sharon Horgan on Season 2's finale: 'What if it happened again?'
This story contains spoilers about the Season 2 finale of Apple TV+’s“Bad Sisters.”
When Season 1 of “Bad Sisters” ended in 2022, the story of the Garvey sisters seemed to have reached a tidy conclusion. The evil John Paul was dead, killed not by one of his four sisters-in-law — each of whom had a compelling motive to commit murder — but by his seemingly meek wife, Grace, fed up by years of abusive behavior. With help from her friend Roger (Michael Smiley), she made it look like J.P. had died in an accident, with the rest of the sisters — Eva (Sharon Horgan), Becka (Eve Hewson), Bibi (Sarah Greene) and Ursula (Eva Birthistle) — facilitating the cover-up.
But Season 2 has slowly unraveled that neat — perhaps too neat — Hollywood ending. Two years after J.P.’s death, Grace has fallen in love with a seemingly kind new man named Ian (Owen McDonnell), but she starts behaving strangely and then dies in a car crash while fleeing home in a state of distress. The grieving sisters try to uncover the truth about what happened to Grace, and increasingly suspect Roger’s pious, overbearing sister Angelica (Fiona Shaw) of wrongdoing — but turn out to be (mostly) wrong about her intentions. Adding to the Garveys’ panic is an idealistic detective named Una Houlihan (Thaddea Graham), who started to ask questions about J.P.’s death.
It all comes to a head in the Season 2 finale, appropriately titled “Cliff Hanger.” It turns out that Ian is not the nice guy he appears to be, but a disgraced former cop named Cormac who has a wife and family in the North and has tricked Eva into handing over money that was intended for Grace’s daughter Blánaid (Saise Quinn). In a heated confrontation with the Garvey sisters at Eva’s house, he threatens to tell police about their role in covering up J.P.’s murder when — whack! — Angelica turns up and hits him on the head with Blánaid’s camogie stick. Believing that Ian is dead, the sisters plan to dispose of his body — only to discover that he is alive. In the end, Houlihan helps silence Ian and protect the sisters. In the final scene, the Garveys set Grace’s ashes adrift in the sea and finally seem to put their sister’s trauma behind them.
Series creator Sharon Horgan spoke to The Times about Season 2 and the twist-filled finale. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Series creator Sharon Horgan in the finale of Season 2 of “Bad Sisters.”
(Apple)
Season 1 seemed to wrap things up rather neatly. What made you want to go back for more?
I didn’t think I was going to go back for more, but everyone responded to those characters. That’s not always the case and Apple wanted to do more. I thought, if I can think of a story that feels important to tell, then I’ll do it.
People found the ending perfect — it was, kind of, but I was much more interested in the real life of it all. Even though it was heightened, it was always supposed to feel that these were ordinary women who experienced something extraordinary but terrible. In the real world, it isn’t neat and triumphant like that. I wanted to explore the aftermath of something like that and what would really happen to a woman like Grace who had been isolated and full of shame for so many years.
In researching those relationships, and what happens when someone comes out the other side — if they manage to — they don’t necessarily fall into a healthy relationship. They’re so vulnerable, they can be targeted easily.
My original idea was what if it happened again? Would she be believed? What would her sisters’ reaction be? Could she go to them? Then the story started coming into the light. I knew it would be more brutal, but I also felt like I wanted to dig into that. I wanted to really feel the aftermath of what it’s like to have an abuser in your life. I wanted to dig into the institutions that are there to protect us and what happens when they don’t. There was still a lot of stuff I was angry about, and I wanted to tell it through these sisters, who people like watching,
Did you do research into domestic abuse and con artists?
I did a lot of work around the “Dirty John“-type relationships, the kind of women who end up in those situations and the psychopaths behind them.
Ian is a different kind of villain from J.P. He presents as a nice, sensitive guy, but then it turns out he’s this serial abuser and con man. Were you trying to explore another kind of toxic male?
I was more interested in exploring how difficult it is to move on when you’ve been in Grace’s situation and how open and vulnerable women like that are, and [people] who can find their way in through the cracks. I was interested in all of the sisters and where they are two years on, how what happened in Season 1 impacted all of them. For Eva, she finally got to offload to her sisters that terrible thing that had happened to her [getting raped by J.P.] and had arrested her life. She’s now starting over. There was a lot of me in there — like, let’s try and fix my life. Let’s go out and run, let’s stop drinking, let’s sort my hormones, all that. When she suffers bereavement, she’s vulnerable and just wants something to fill that grief hole.
It’s interesting because not only does Grace fall for Ian, the sisters do too — Eva literally.
That’s what happens — whole families are taken in and they feel so much shame around having been duped. These guys are incredibly good at what they do. The idea that he met Grace at her bereavement group — I listened to so many podcasts and read so many articles with stories like that.
Ian (Owen McDonnell) turns out not to be the nice guy he seems. “That’s what happens — whole families are taken in and they feel so much shame around having been duped,” Horgan says.
(Apple)
Are you a true crime podcast listener?
Audio books, too. I heavily deep dove into true crime — for too long, actually, I’ve cut it out. It was getting to an unhealthy place. I know women are drawn to it. But you don’t want to stay in there for too long. It becomes like an addiction. I was listening to them at night and then waking up in the morning having forgotten to switch it off, and it was onto the next one.
Do you have a theory about why women are so into true crime?
So they know what to expect and can do their best to avoid it. So they’re aware. A lot of the stories I was reading were about narcissistic men and psychopaths, and how they operate. I’m not saying I’m hyper-vigilant now, but I certainly know the signs.
At a screening in New York, you alluded to the appeal of “Bad Sisters” in the present political climate because it’s a story about women refusing to have the bad decisions of men deciding their destiny. How much were you consciously channeling female rage when you were writing this show?
Certainly when I was making Season 1, I was like, “This could be very cathartic, this could help everyone feel angry together.” As I was making it, there was stuff that was really upsetting me. It was what happened with Sarah Everard and the fact that her murder was perpetrated by a cop and her having done all the right things, yet still it happened. I found it so terrifying. There were several [similar] stories about cops who’d been allowed to perpetrate [crimes] and get away with it, and they continued to work because it is so institutionally sexist. This is why I wanted the character of Houlihan to feel like a potential light. I was really angry about all that, and I wanted to use the show to have a group catharsis again, where the baddies get done, and the good people come out on top.
Angelica is interesting because the sisters really misjudge her. Why is that?
Sometimes we’re so angry about what’s going on in the world, we misplace our anger. Angelica was such an amazing character for me because she was really just a decoy baddie. She’s a very flawed person, and she’s a bigot in her own way. But she is a product of her environment and that generation, especially in Northern Ireland at that time. A certain life was expected for you, and woe betide you if you went outside of that. Suddenly she sees this new generation of modern Irish women, and she’s like, “What is that?”
There’s so much that we forgive people for that is generational, all sorts of bigotry. I think she rattled the sisters. She represents everything that they stand against. They’re a very liberal, free group of women. It’s also their grief, their paranoia and the panic that leads them to get it so wrong. But at the same time, Angelica is a wagon. [Irish slang for an ornery woman.]
Sharon Horgan on Angelica (Fiona Shaw): “She’s a very flawed person, and she’s a bigot in her own way. But she is a product of her environment and that generation, especially in Northern Ireland at that time.”
(Apple)
So how did you decide that Angelica would be the one to (almost) kill Ian? She’s like an honorary bad sister now.
Fiona Shaw always said, “I’m the heroine of the piece.” There were all sorts of routes we were going to take — it was Blánaid, it was one of the sisters. I felt like I’d seen “it was the kid,” and I didn’t want it to be one of the sisters because it didn’t feel as unexpected. I wanted it to be this woman who, against all odds, makes you cheer. I wanted that moment when the camera pans up and you would be like, “F— well done!” And I wanted them to choose to look after her and it felt like the sisterhood expanded at that point. There was some beautiful, f— up solidarity there that I liked. Angelica was like Rambo with the camogie stick. It’s weird, the way that story comes together. Sometimes you have the visuals first. I kept thinking about what new Irish thing I wanted to introduce to the audience. My sisters and I used to play camogie [an Irish sport similar to lacrosse] when we were little, and my sister got her front teeth knocked out. I wanted to see the next generation of young women playing this sport that’s so brutal. I had that idea before I had the idea that it would would [nearly] kill Ian.
There has been some conversation lately about the Irish moment that seems to be happening in pop culture. I wonder if you have thoughts about it?
We don’t have the baggage [of imperialism] and we’re really good storytellers because that’s all we had for so long. We had nothing. We just had the craic and someone to be angry with. There’s an amazing tradition of storytelling and also this great darkness and ability to harness tragedy and make a great song or a story about it. For a small island, we’ve always had enormous talent come out of it and hugely influential impact on culture. The “why now” — that I don’t know. There’s probably some very practical reason for it, like funding, but it’s really lovely.
So are you done telling the story of the Garvey sisters?
I know that when I wrote the ending for this season it felt like the end. I guess an idea could come to mind that feels viable for the world we’ve created, but for now I think we have a finale that gives fans what they wanted and allowed me to say what I needed to say.
Movie Reviews
Bandar Movie Review: Bobby Deol roars in Anurag Kashyap’s unsettling legal thriller that refuses to spoon-feed
Name: Bandar
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Bobby Deol, Sanya Malhotra, Sapna Pabbi, Saba Azad, Jitendra Joshi, Raj B Shetty
Writer: Sudip Sharma, Abhishek Banerjee
Rating: 3.5/5
Plot:
Bandar follows Sameer Mehra’s character, essayed by Bobby Deol, a fading star who is desperately clinging to his past glory. Just as he attempts to rebuild his life and finds solace in a new relationship, his world comes crashing down. A former girlfriend files a heinous allegation against him, dragging him into a vicious, high-profile legal battle. Written by Sudip Sharma and Abhishek Banerjee, the film moves away from standard Bollywood courtroom setups. Instead, it dives straight into the murky waters of social media trials, public perception, and a sluggish judicial system where the truth gets buried under layers of gray.
What works:
Known for his chaotic energy, Anurag Kashyap takes a remarkably mature and controlled approach here. He avoids sensationalizing a highly sensitive topic, choosing instead to focus on the psychological claustrophobia of the protagonist. The prison sequences are exceptionally well-shot. They create a suffocating, raw atmosphere that makes you feel the weight of the character’s confinement. The script successfully avoids preachy, black-and-white monologues. It bravely forces the audience to confront their own biases regarding modern-day public trials and the digital judge-and-jury culture.
What doesn’t:
Clocking in at nearly two hours and twenty minutes, Bandar feels heavily weighed down in the second half. The narrative stretches thin, and a few subplots demand too much patience, making you wish for a tighter edit. The film stubbornly refuses to take a definitive moral stance or offer a neat resolution. While film enthusiasts might appreciate the complexity, mainstream viewers looking for a clear-cut ending or emotional payoff might walk away feeling detached and frustrated.
Performances:
- Bobby Deol is the beating heart of this film. Stripping away the massive macho swagger and menacing villainy of his recent hits, he delivers a deeply vulnerable, understated performance. He plays Samar with a mix of arrogance, confusion, and raw helplessness, proving his immense range.
- Sanya Malhotra anchors her screen time with her trademark reliability, turning in a grounded and impactful performance.
- Saba Azad and Sapna Pabbi excel in their respective roles, bringing genuine nuance to characters that could have easily been sidelined.
- Jitendra Joshi is an absolute scene-stealer, commanding your attention every single time he steps into the frame.
- Indrajith Sukumaran and Raj B Shetty are absolute show stealers with their raw acting.
Final Verdict:
Bandar is an unsettling, morally complex thriller that refuses to spoon-feed its audience. It isn’t a comfortable watch, nor does it try to be. While the sluggish pacing in the second half prevents it from being an absolute masterpiece, it is worth a watch for Bobby Deol’s spectacular acting reinvention and Anurag Kashyap’s gritty, thought-provoking storytelling.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Pinkvilla. No statement in this article is intended to defame, harm, or malign any individual or entity.
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Kathy Hilton will no longer be the grand marshal of West Hollywood’s pride parade.
The city and WeHo Pride on Wednesday released a joint statement, announcing that “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star would no longer serve as the Grand Marshal Icon for the 2026 WeHo Pride Parade. The event is scheduled for Sunday.
“After thoughtful discussions, the City of West Hollywood, the WeHo Pride production team, and Kathy Hilton have determined that the 2026 WeHo Pride Parade will not designate a Grand Marshal Icon honoree,” read the statement.
The decision comes less than a week after Hilton was announced. That May 28 announcement was met with swift backlash from the LGBTQ+ community and allies, who called out Hilton’s ties to President Trump and alleged MAGA-leaning politics. Critics also cited accusations that the socialite had used a homophobic slur while on a trip with other cast members of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” an action she has previously denied.
In their joint statement, West Hollywood and the WeHo Pride team expressed their appreciation for “the respectful and sincere dialogue” around both the event and the “role and significance” of Pride honorees.
“The City of West Hollywood has always believed that Pride belongs to the community,” the joint statement said. “Since its earliest days, Pride has served as both a celebration and a platform for activism, visibility, resilience, and the ongoing pursuit of equality, dignity, and justice for LGBTQ+ people. … These conversations reflect the passion people have for WeHo Pride and underscore the importance of ensuring that WeHo Pride continues to honor the history, values, and diverse voices of the LGBTQ+ community.”
In a statement, Hilton expressed gratitude for being considered for grand marshal and reaffirmed her commitment to the LGBTQ+ community and causes.
“My reason for wanting to be involved in this year’s WeHo Pride weekend was simple: to celebrate, support, and share in the joy of a community that means a great deal to so many people,” Hilton said. “Pride is, and always will be, about celebrating and uplifting LGBTQ+ voices, experiences, and achievements. … My support for the community and WeHo Pride is unwavering.”
She also mentioned several queer advocacy organizations and events she has supported over the years, including GLAAD, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Dr. Mathilde Krim, God’s Love We Deliver and Project Angel Food.
The latest Pride-related dust-up follows the abrupt cancellation of the Long Beach Pride Festival in May. The city’s Pride Parade took place as planned.
Both snafus have occurred as conservative politicians and advocates continue to attack LGBTQ+ rights and visibility nationwide. Some Republican governors have even pushed for conservative alternatives to Pride month festivities. A recent Gallup poll has found that after years of steady gains, support for marriage equality and same-sex relationships has slipped, particularly among Republicans.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages
Back in the good ol’days — the ’90s — John Travolta would love to get off the topic of “Michael,” “Pulp Fiction” or “Get Shorty” in interviews with film journalists like me and regale us with how utterly besotted he had been with his first flying experience, how that drove his passion for piloting and buying planes and airfield-adjacent luxury houses.
He didn’t even seem to mind having to move house when this or that development balked at him flying his Boeing 707 out of there on the way to locations.
Travolta would tell any journalist who asked that he was writing a kid-friendly book, “Propeller: One Way Night Coach,” based on his first flights as a child in old propeller driven airliners — cheap red-eye overnight treks with too many connections for your average jet age traveller to tolerate.
I remember picking up the book when it came out later in the ’90s — at an airport gift shop — and thinking “Well, that’s as cute as I figured.”
And now, decades later and trapped in the B-movie hell of his post “Gotti” career, Travolta’s turned that cute book into the most delightful, fanciful and colorful bon bon of a movie.
“One Way Night Coach” is a child’s fantasy of flight and flying the way it used to be — with pristine, uncrowded, futuristic airports, an early ’60s era of jets and prop planes with over-uniformed stewardesses in white gloves, the days “Back before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham,” as Sideshow Bob memorably sneered on “The Simpsons’.”
It’s a fictionalized account of Travolta’s childhood about an only child (at least two Travolta siblings have bit parts in this movie) of a never-made-it/never-will actress/single-mom (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) who indulges her aviation-obsessed eight-year-old with a cheap cross-country overnight flight.
Little Jeff (Clark Shotwell) will revel in almost every Idlewild to Pittsburgh to Dayton to Chicago to Kansas City to Denver and Los Angeles minute. He strolls into the cockpit to meet pilots, charms the stewardesses and checks out the sleeping bunks on the TWA Lockheed Super Constellation, loving even the delays if not the Chicken Cordon Bleu he’s offered on legs of the journey that offer a meal.
And as he’s an observant child, he comments (Travolta narrates) on his 50ish mother’s vamping and posing, her choice of cigarettes (Newports) and drinks, the solo traveling men whose attention she pursues and earns.
“I was her best audience,” adult Jeff remembers of the mother who’d read him plays as bedtime stories and delusionally hopes that this trip to Los Angeles might be her “big break” even though she’s pushing 50.
“Hollywood called,” she’d explain about their overnight cheap flight arrangements to ticket agents and crew. “They told me to take the next flight!”
At every turn, Jeff meets or sees kindness — stewardesses who indulge his many questions and bump them up to first class on the mostly-empty planes, a captain who fixes his toy model of a Constellation, a mentally ill flyer who flips out but is calmed by a flight attendant who isn’t overworked and frazzled in jet-powered tin-can jammed with Joe and Jane Sweatsocks who think nothing of traveling in their pajamas.
Normally, I cringe at pictures this reliant on voice-over narration. I recoil from stars who populate their picture with Sandler etc. offspring. But “Propeller” is unfailingly sweet and never cloying.
Sure, it’s fictionalized. But if you’ve followed Travolta’s life and career, a lot of him is in this — his raptoruous engagement with flying, an indulged child who developed a taste for fine food and creature comforts, a mother who was his guiding star as an actor.
I get why there are less adoring reviews than mine floating around “Propeller.” It’s unfailingly sweet. Mom’s man-hunting is seriously dated. This TWA tale is decorated with Gershwin’s majestic “Rhapsody in Blue” — United Airlines’ signature tune. And Travolta’s been around long enough for recent generations to come up and not feel a connection to the “Saturday Night Fever/Get Shorty” star whose career has fallen off and life has been visited by too much tragedy.
But I’d hate to be seated next to anybody who doesn’t appreciate this adorable, pristine and nearly perfect aviation fantasy on any flight, much less an overnight one.
Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Clark Shotwell, Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ellen Travolta, Ella Beau Travolta, Olga Hoffmann and John Travolta.
Credits: Scripted and directed by John Travolta, based on his book. An Apple TV+ release.
Running time: 1:01
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