Seeking justice … Rose Byrne as Samantha Quinn and Meghann Fahy as Charlotte Quinn in The Good Daughter. Photograph: Peacock/™ as Charlotte Quinn in The Good Daughter. Photograph: Peacock/™
The Good Daughter: Rose Byrne’s legal thriller is so full of calamity it borders on Mr Bean-like farce
This slightly preposterous psychological drama – featuring Byrne and Meghann Fahy as sisters – is a show about trauma where everyone somehow looks astonishingly beautiful at all times
At first glance, The Good Daughter (Thursday 12 November, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) should make you a little worried about Rose Byrne. Here is an actor not only at the top of her game, but quite frankly at the top of anybody’s. Her Apple TV show Platonic all but depends on her combination of emotional nuance and flawless slapstick to exist, and earlier this year she won a Golden Globe (and was nominated for an Oscar) for her wired, frayed lead performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. In other words, Byrne should be able to make anything she wants.
So it’s bizarre that, of all things, she has chosen this. The Good Daughter is a paperback thriller show. It’s one of those slightly preposterous programmes about trauma where everyone somehow manages to look astonishingly beautiful all the time. It’s David E Kelley territory. It’s Harlan Coben territory. It’s Nicole Kidman in a silly wig territory.
Still, at least it delivers on the trauma front. Written by Karin Slaughter, adapting her own novel, it is one of the most hilariously frontloaded things I have ever seen. In the very first scene, two young girls witness their mother being shot in the face by masked intruders. In the second, we learn that this was a flashback remembered by Meghann Fahy (playing Byrne’s sister). In the third, Fahy accidentally walks in on a school shooting and ends up being beaten up by the police.
So dense with unpleasantries is the opening that you start to worry that The Good Daughter will end up being a sort of trauma-based Mr Bean where Fahy just blunders from catastrophe to catastrophe; maybe she’ll stand in a bear trap, then fall down some stairs while noticing a stain that reminds her of the time she watched her grandmother die. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite turn out to be the case, but it isn’t far off.
However, once this early energy burns off, it does settle into a very good version of what it is. Fahy is a lawyer, whose father (Brendan Gleeson) is also a lawyer. In the wake of the school shooting they are joined by Byrne who, what are the chances, is also a lawyer. However, while Fahy and Gleeson are scrappy backwoods lawyers, Byrne is a rich and successful New York lawyer, as evidenced by the fact that she spends a lot of her time riding around in the back of expensive cars, zooming in and out of blueprints on an iPad, like someone from the future would.
What follows is a twisty, turny thriller about how the family managed to process the violent death of the matriarch, while realising that the shooting implicates much of the broader community. Of the two strands, the first is more successful. Fahy – the highlight of the second White Lotus season – holds up tremendously against Byrne, sharing a warm if occasionally fractious relationship.
The series is best when it drops the plot and offers them pure character beats, such as a scene where they both perform a madcap scrabble to shut a coffin lid. These are enough to make you hope that the pair continue to work together, maybe on something that’s a little more lively and requires them to gaze mournfully into the middle distance a little less.
Perhaps as a UK viewer I’m just spoilt. In terms of plot, there isn’t a lot separating The Good Daughter from something like Sherwood, which is hardly fair. But Sherwood was able to embellish its soapy dramatics with boiling hot political anger and moral outrage. This doesn’t have that. It’s primped, glossed and diluted to be palatable to the biggest possible audience.
And that might answer my first point. The Good Daughter isn’t a logical choice for a performer such as Byrne who finds herself in the middle of a hot streak. But if there is one thing Apple TV shows and critical indie hits aren’t particularly known for it’s a large viewership. If nothing else, something as slick as The Good Daughter has the potential to be the most-watched thing Rose Byrne has made in years. At this point in her career, who could deny her that?
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