TV review: SisterS offers a sweary tale of reunited siblings
SisterS, on RTÉ One.
IF BRIDGET JONES had a sassy, cynical and foul-mouthed older sister, she would look very like Suze (Susan Stanley). As we meet her in episode one of SisterS, the feisty Dubliner’s life is a car crash - and that’s before the sister she never knew she had unwittingly enters her life.
New Irish comedy SisterS - which debuts on RTÉ - is a show with an edge, a tale of two siblings who never knew of each other’s existence and who could not, on the face of it, be more different.
While the first episode - which runs at a bite-sized 26 minutes - is jammed with swear words, sarcasm and sexual encounters, there’s a hint of darkness and depth behind all the wild behaviour.
The opening episode does a nice turn in tricking viewers, opening with a sombre funeral and earnest music. Sare (Sarah Goldberg from HBO’s Barry) is grieving her mother’s demise in her home country of Canada, before listening to a message mum has left from beyond the grave and screaming: “What the f**k?!”
Thousands of miles away in a hotel bedroom in Ireland, Suze wakes up and screams the very same words. Hungover, broke and in the midst of a thirtysomethig crisis, her life is a mess. Her landlord wants her out, her affair with a married man is a thankless relationship, and her deeply eccentric mother (Sophie Thompson) has invited a Canadian seeking information about her Irish dad to the family home.
Neither woman knows it yet, but they are about to discover they are siblings, both the daughters of an Irishman named Jimmy Molloy. Sare is keen to trace him, but Suze isn’t exactly full of praise. “I have no idea where he is. The last time I saw him he was stumbling over O’Connell Bridge and he looked like he’d pissed himself,” she tells her newfound sister.
SisterS was created, written by and stars Goldberg and Stanley, longtime friends who met in acting college. The Canadian-Irish co-production - which is already growing legs with international TV networks - was filmed on location in Ireland last year. The storytellers say they were inspired to develop the project following a surge in female-driven comedies by creators like Sharon Horgan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Director Declan Lowney, who previously directed Fr Ted and Ted Lasso, mostly manages to harness the madness.
There’s enough going on to intrigue viewers, and the show’s snippy running time will make for an ideal binge-watching experience.
