Alafair Burke’s novel, The Better Sister, has been adapted into a mini series–a thriller-drama about a twisted family, and the fact that no matter how much one tries to leave it behind, the past never fully disappears.
Chloe (Jessica Biel) is the glamorous and successful editor of a women’s magazine, married to a somewhat shady corporate lawyer, Adam (Corey Stoll), and has a teenage son, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). Chloe returns home after a party to find Adam stabbed to death. The two detectives who arrive to investigate, Guidry (Kim Dickens) and Bowen (Bobby Naderi), are aggressive and suspicious, instead of being sympathetic to the trauma Chloe and Ethan are facing. Chloe has to answer their hostile questions still in the blood-soaked white dress she was wearing when she found the body.
In the way layers are revealed in an effective thriller, it turns out that Adam was the ex-husband of Chloe’s sister, Nicky (Elizabeth Banks), and Ethan is her son. Nicky was an alcoholic and drug addict, so the child’s custody was granted to the father and stepmother. But when the murder takes place, Ethan is still a minor and his biological mother is the legal guardian, so despite Chloe’s protests and misgivings, Nicky is back in her life.
She moves into Chloe’s New York apartment to be close to Ethan, and over each of the eight episodes (on Amazon Prime), the sisters’ troubled past, their fraught relationship, the secrets, lies and cover-ups are unpacked. When Ethan, who lied about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, is arrested as a suspect, the sisters have to get together to find ways to help their son—their hate put aside so that the love and loyalty they had hidden away gets a way to get out of the dark recesses of their shared history.
The cops gloat over the humiliation of a rich woman, the tabloids have a field day with the salacious facts they dig up and distort– Nicky has nothing to lose, but Chloe’s high-profile career and the life she painstakingly built up are on the line. In the process their friends and colleagues are also wrapped up in the various strands of the story.
Created by Olivia Milch, with Craig Gillespie, Leslie Hope, Azazel Jacobs, Dawn Wilkinson, and Stephanie Laing as directors (too many for a thriller) with an even bigger team of writers, not necessarily adding to or improving on the book. Burke’s novel was a quick read and the series is a passable binge watch, with excellent performances by Biel and Banks.
- The Better Sister
- Created by Olivia Milch
- Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Biel, Corey Stoll, Maxwell Acee Donovan and others
- On Amazon Prime Video
