Marriage can act as a balm against loneliness but not always stress. At its worst, marriage can also be a cause of isolation for many women. There are several reasons — mostly rooted in social constructs about masculinity — why men are taught to trade in emotions for bullheadedness, like it is the case for the character JP Williams (played by Claes Bang) in Apple TV’s new show, Bad Sisters.

JP is the kind of person who tells his wife what to wear, what to eat, who you can see, how to behave. And even though no one wants to be controlled this way, his wife Grace (played by Anne-Marie Duff) simply doesn’t —or can’t — get out of the shackles in a mentally abusive relationship. JP knows how to manipulate Grace to the point she takes all the blame and shame for what’s happening around her. It’s a definition of love that’s hard to pin down.

‘Refusal to see reality’

Presenting this in a plot that’s smothered in sarcasm and humour can make for great TV. Looking after Grace’s affairs are the other Garvey sisters. Eva (Sharon Horgan) is the fiercely protective matriarch of the clan. Bibi (Sarah Greene) leads a stable domestic life but she is always angry, largely because of an accident that left her with one eye. Next is Ursula (Eva Birthistle), a nurse who is married to a paramedic. The youngest is Becka (Eve Hewson), the free-spirited youngest sister. They all want to save Grace and her 12-year-old daughter.

The sisters want to save Grace to the point of murdering JP. In fact, the show begins with JP in the coffin with “post-mortem priapism”. After the first episode — appropriately titled The Prick — it goes straight into the chain of events that landed JP in his present state.

“I suppose the most complex aspect of Grace was really her sense of denial. And her refusal to see the reality of what was happening around her and why we tend to imprison ourselves and refuse to realise we’ve got the key… if only we are honest about the events that are happening around us. Her naivety was a sort of plot device, so for me that was the most challenging aspect,” says Anne-Marie Duff over a video call that was organised by Apple TV+.

The Irish writer and performer Sharon Horgan, who created Bad Sisters with Dave Finkel and Brett Baer, has been integral to some of the most caustic shows on British TV, including Pulling and Catastrophe. Sharon uses humour as a device to make the plot palatable and she managed to keep moralism out of her way in the series, which is based on the Flemish series Clan.

“It’s an adaptation, so I’m the creator of this version of the show. I decided to do a dark comedy thriller because I hadn’t done it before. And this felt like kind of a combination of what I’ve done before, which is to write about relationships, love, friendship and ancestors, and then to have this whole new aspect on top. It just felt like a good idea because I think you can get a bit stuck in a rut if you do the same thing all the time; you need to be taken out of your comfort zone,” says Sharon.

‘A less uncharitable side to JP’

But the character around whom the story revolves is JP, the meanest, baddest and vilest man a woman can fall in love with. There is very little one can like about him, yet he is perfectly relatable.

“I tried my best to make him as hated as possible. I think they’ve done a brilliant job of writing this. So it’s like a glove and you just put it on in a sense that all his actions and everything he says are horrible. As an actor, you don’t have to put too much more in there. We are still married. So in order for Anne-Marie not to seem like crazy, I try to put some love or something like that in there. I just let actions and dialogues expose different sides of my character,” says Claes Bang, whom you may remember from the 2017 film The Square, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

JP can be the uncle we all may know, who is always bitter. Yet, we can’t leave that uncle behind. “We still had to make sense of the whole thing… why we are they still together? We sort of found a less uncharitable side to JP by showing he has real love for his daughter. But it’s true that we all have this uncle…. I had a stepdad and he was probably not quite as bad as JP, but he got close to. And I do feel that sometimes it is a question of allowing what is in the script to expose sides of yourself. And I feel that the best way of having something resonate with an audience is to start having it resonate with me, because then it will come from something that is true within me,” says Claes.

Claes Bang and Anne-Marie Duff in Bad Sisters

The isolation

There is also the issue of isolation for Grace. The sisters are a close-knit family, who will do anything for one another. Even though they have their own lives, they keep meeting. But not Grace. It’s as if JP has cast a spell on her.

“You talk about the isolation of Grace. Sometimes when I was filming, I felt very isolated, because all the other actresses would be together in all these scenes where they were plotting or discussing our marriage. And I didn’t get to see them. So I would spend weeks not seeing the other actresses. It’s very odd, I mean, it fed into my performance, which was useful. It’s one of the things about the work we do… as the years go by, you try to develop a thick skin and focus on the story you’re telling. But, at times, I did feel kind of lonely and separated. Meanwhile, all Grace needed to do is ask for help. But she doesn’t feel the need for asking,” says Anne-Marie.

As for what viewers can take away from the show, that’s a difficult question for Claes. “I think people should simply watch it. And if they want to take something from it, it’s great. Otherwise, they can have a fun time.” But for Anne-Marie there’s something more. “I guess it might be a red flag for somebody, if they’re in a very dysfunctional marriage or relationship. Who knows? Who knows what the ripple effect of your storytelling is? And if they see something that rings true for them, and raises an alarm and makes them realise, ‘Oh, something was happening to me isn’t very healthy’, or, ‘the way that I’m treating somebody isn’t very healthy.’ I guess that could be a gift in a way and that’s the medicine the story can offer.”

If not for anything, watch this Apple TV+ show for its smart dialogues and plot. And also for Claes Bang, who pulls off an even more impressive act as John Paul without descending into caricature.