'The Good Daughter' review: Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne star in a bingeable Peacock mystery that Harlan Coben fans shouldn't skip
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Rating: 3/5 Stars Verdict: "Based on the thriller novel by Karin Slaughter, 'The Good Daughter' is a twist-filled mystery set in a small Georgia town across dual time periods. Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne anchor the story as estranged sisters, delivering family relationship drama that is more satisfying than the pulpy, convoluted Harlan Coben-like plot." Premiere date/time: All six episodes premiere Nov. 12 Where to watch: Stream on Peacock
Although she has a long way to go before reaching Harlan Coben status, novelist Karin Slaughter creates similarly addictive yet disposable crime thrillers, full of sudden twists and complicated backstory.
I get a similar feeling from watching TV adaptations of both authors’ books, eager to tune in for the next episode but a bit let down when all of the secrets are revealed. That was my response to the first TV series based on a Slaughter novel, the 2022 Netflix hit “Pieces of Her,” and it’s the same for the new Slaughter series, "The Good Daughter."
There’s more emotional depth to Slaughter’s stories than Coben’s, and “The Good Daughter” is anchored by two strong performances from Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne as estranged sisters Charlie and Sam Quinn. The six-episode Peacock original series, adapted by Slaughter herself from her 2017 novel, is more briskly paced than “Pieces of Her,” although it still gets bogged down in lengthy stretches of exposition.
It deals with some heavy themes, but always in a pulpy, airport-novel kind of way, making it an easy binge despite the dark subject matter.
Set in the fictional Georgia town of Pikeville, “The Good Daughter” shifts between past and present as it tells the connected stories of two terrible incidents involving Charlie and Sam (played as children by Drew Cheek and Audrey Grace Marshall). Their father Rusty (Brendan Gleeson) is a steadfast local defense attorney who frequently incurs the wrath of the corrupt legal system run by the powerful Coin family.
When he angers the wrong people, the Quinns’ house gets burned down, and then they’re attacked by two gunmen in their new home while Rusty is out. The assailants kill Charlie and Sam’s mother, Gamma (Olivia Williams), and the two young girls barely get away.
Decades later, Charlie still lives in Pikeville, working as a defense lawyer alongside her father and separated from her husband Ben (Michael Dorman), an assistant district attorney. She finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she witnesses the aftermath of a shooting at the local high school, and soon she’s deeply involved in defending the shooter, a scared and possibly mentally disabled young woman named Kelly Wilson (Shayna Benardo). After he’s incapacitated, Rusty calls in Sam for help, and she arrives from New York City, where she’s been working as a patent lawyer.
That’s just some of the set-up for this overstuffed story, which can get a bit unwieldy as it moves back and forth across time periods and works out all of the intricate, overlapping relationships among the characters.
Of course, everyone in town is hiding something, and that includes the Quinns, who have to reveal their own long-buried secrets while searching for the truth about what actually happened at the high school, where the principal and one student were shot dead.
In the hands of lesser actors, “The Good Daughter” could have come across as low-rent exploitation, but Fahy and Byrne find the honesty and vulnerability in their characters, and the show succeeds as a story about sisters learning to trust and care for each other again.
As the present-day story begins, Charlie and Sam haven’t seen each other in 10 years, and Sam initially intends to spend only a day in town to help Rusty get back on his feet. But the more they’re together, the more they renew their connection, while also pushing each other’s buttons.
Fahy and Byrne have convincing sisterly chemistry, and it’s easy to believe that these people care deeply for one another and also carry deep resentment. The family dynamic is ultimately more engaging than the mystery of the school shooting, and the resolutions of the past and present storylines aren’t tied together as closely as might be expected.
Both Charlie and Sam are holding onto issues from the day their mother was murdered, and those revelations are cathartic, while the solution to the present-day mystery just feels like wrapping up loose ends.
Once the pieces start to fall into place, it’s not difficult to see where the story is going, and the final episode offers a string of long explanations that clear up every little question. Like the many Coben shows, “The Good Daughter” is both complicated and superficial, and it’s unlikely to linger in viewers’ minds for long.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the time, though, especially for Coben fans or anyone who enjoyed seeing Fahy in fellow beach-read adaptations “The Perfect Couple” and “Sirens.” I was never hesitant to press play on the next episode, but I also found it easy to walk away at the end.
“The Good Daughter” premieres Nov. 12 on Peacock