
Thomas, whose bedridden wife is about to give birth, runs their late father’s insurance business, which holds the policy on John Paul and is facing a disastrously huge payout in order to avoid bankruptcy, he’s frantically bent on proving that the insured was murdered. The latter timeline adds another contrasting family group, the Claffins, half-brothers Thomas (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack). The story unrolls along two, eventually connecting tracks, one leading up to the death of John Paul, and one set in its immediate aftermath, each with its own mysteries and suspense. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to keep the viewer’s sympathy with the attempting murderers, and Horgan, her writers and her cast pull this off expertly, not just through the unrelieved awfulness of John Paul - a common enough trick, making the antagonist-victim less sympathetic than his protagonist-attackers - but by the portrayal of the sisters, who, though not without flaws, are well-rounded, recognizably human and coming ultimately from a place of love. Murder, of course, isn’t right, though it offers comic possibilities that a more rational approach to Grace’s situation - say, therapy leading to divorce - would not.
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The morality of getting rid of John Paul is never really in question - the viewer would be happy to do it himself, if it came to that - only the practical matters of how to do it and how to get away with it. In any case, it’s dramatically counterproductive to humanize or psychologize him, though Bang does at least try to bring some shading to a thoroughly despicable character he plays him as soft-spoken, letting his height and weight comprise an implicit threat against the the small, reed-thin Duff. (He is with Grace, one can only assume, because she offers him no resistance and he can depend on her to raise their daughter as he sees fit.) There is a hint of some trauma in his childhood, which is not really explored. Manipulative, selfish, controlling, territorial, vindictive, (performatively) prudish, snobbish, homophobic, sexist, mean, demeaning and aggressively passive-aggressive, he masks his cruelty to his wife as paternal concern. Each has an additional motive for wanting John Paul dead.

(As the closest families often are.) Besides the fragile Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), whose husband, and above-mentioned corpse, John Paul ( Claes Bang), is grinding her down to nothing, there is Ursula (Eva Birthistle), a nurse and mother of four, somehow managing an adulterous affair with her photography teacher angry Bibi (Sarah Greene), who lost an eye in an accident the details of which will become significant and bright-eyed Becka ( Eve Hewson), the baby, a massage therapist, who has a history of ill-advised relationships, but considerable life force. Horgan plays Eva Garvey, who took charge of her siblings after the untimely death of their parents she and her sisters are colorfully distinct, and yet they seem truly related, unusually close if sometimes at odds. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
