There have been many films and series as of late that hone in on how society pressures mothers because they don’t parent in the same way. Everyone has an opinion on how you raise your child, but that goes one step further in Prime Video’s addictive and enticing limited series, The Better Sister. With a set of fascinating performances at its center, this family affair is will leave you guessing until the very end.
Alafair Burke’s novel of the same name was billed as a domestic noir when it was released in the spring of 2019, so it’s natural to see how this page-turner would make for a bingable series. Jessica Biel stars as Chloe Taylor, a high-powered (is there any other kind?) magazine executive poised to take her career to the next level when a viral speech creates whispers of a potential political bid. Her husband, Adam (a tall, delicious Corey Stoll), is a busy attorney who always arrives late to posh events and important fundraisers. Their teenage son, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan), is quiet but gravitates to his mother. They are the kind of familty who can easily say, “That’s our second home” when referring to their Hamptons property, but that affluent world crashes down with Chloe discovers Adam’s bloody body late one evening with Ethan unable to account for the hour when his father was killed.
Seeing Biel covered in blood–her ivory, silky dress stained a disturbing crimson even in the late beachy evening–might reminds viewers of one of her best roles in USA’s The Sinner. That limited-series-turned-serial explored rage and “the why” to a murder committed in plain sight. The Better Sister is the kind of drama that lurks in the shadows. This series, after all, is not just a murder mystery but a complicated web of a whodunnit wrapped in the high stakes of a familial drama when we meet Elizabeth Banks’ Nicky, a recovering addict who just so happens to be the first of Adam’s two wives, and…bum bum BUM…Ethan’s real mother. That’s not a spoiler as much as a thorny, can-you-believe-that jumping off point.
Where some shows would use these twists as a melodramatic stopping place, The Better Sister is more interested in exploring how we forgive and how we live the choices that we make for ourselves and our loved ones. When you think it’s just going to be a courtroom drama, it turns again to look inward at Nicky’s addiction and her troubled rearview look at her relationship with her father. Chloe has the luxury and wealth to not look back at her childhood, but her sister has no choice to wade through it and, somehow, try to learn how to be a better person.
Banks is incredible, wielding Nicky’s serrated anger with no control–it’s one of her best performances of her career. Biel’s Chloe is brittle, elegant, and tougher than she appears. Do they complete each other or must they accept that they are like oil and water? Chloe and Nicky crash headlong into one another, but they also slide off of the other’s slipperiness and reluctance. One cannot exist without the other. Biel and Banks are like two halves of the same broken heart.
Kim Dickens, as Detective Guidry, smirks like a Cheshire Cat every time she encounters this dysfunctional pair. Lorraine Toussaint knows exactly what kind of show she is in as Chloe’s no-nonsense mentor and publisher of her magazine. She has a great moment with Banks where she lounges in an armchair in her kitchen–seriously, someone cast her in everything, please? Gloria Reuben, as Ethan’s lawyer, brings poise and charm to what could have been a weary role. The costuming by Stacey Barttat (a frequent Sophia Coppola collaborator) is fantastic.
This series could, on its surface, appear to be an obsessive, juicy melodrama, and it knows how to fire on those cylinders. The more you sit with it, though, the more you realize how devoted it is to its characters. Some of us had to raise ourselves and grow up without the eyes of adoring parent, and these two women keep shortening the distance between them. This one’s a real mother.
The Better Sister is streaming on Prime Video.
