A roster of perfectly cast character actors fills every episode. And it boasts a pair of stars, Jessica Biel and Pittsfield native Elizabeth Banks, as estranged, antagonistic sisters thrown together by a high-profile murder, who know how to carry the action through potentially generic moments. There aren’t many of those.
Chloe (Biel) and Nicky (Banks) were raised in the Cleveland area by a roguish and frightening alcoholic father (Frederick Weller) and a classically codependent mother (Janel Maloney). Chloe got out and climbed the New York media ladder; she‘s now the editor and public face of a popular women’s lifestyle magazine and a major player in the #MeToo movement.
Nicky stayed near the nest and descended into addiction, married local attorney Adam (Corey Stoll), and they had a son, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). That’s where things get complicated: Seemingly afraid of Nicky’s influence on Ethan, Adam gets a restraining order on his wife — and then connives his way into Chloe’s bed and charmed life. The new couple raises Ethan into a troubled teenager. The “Big Love” is hard to find, but the term “sister wives” gets tossed around. So does “white trash.”
Then Adam is found murdered in the couple’s swanky East Hampton home (they also have a penthouse overlooking Central Park). His law practice, led by a suavely sinister Matthew Modine, has been representing a shady building company that has drawn the attention of the FBI. Nicky, now sober and caring for Adam’s layabout mom in Cleveland, is called to New York as Ethan’s official legal guardian, and still hates Adam for taking away her son. Ethan, now a burly but gentle teen, is charged for the murder under flimsy evidence put forth by an aggressive police detective (a wonderfully snarky Kim Dickens).
And so the estranged sisters reluctantly battle through old childhood torments and fresher adult animosities to try to save their son from a life in prison. Biel, as a perfectly coiffed but unraveling mistress of the universe, and Banks, who leans into Nicky’s latent party girl personality (she really knows how to rock a long-sleeved Billy Joel T-shirt), make a meal of the sisterly drama.
But much of the pleasure in “The Better Sister” comes from the periphery, chiefly the supporting cast and thematic webs weaved by the characters on the outside of what becomes both a family and media circus.
My list of favorites starts with Dickens, who turns her don’t-give-a-damn lesbian cop Nan Guidry into a complicated and deeply ambivalent character. When her fellow detective (Bobby Naderi, also excellent) asks if she was picked on a lot in her youth, her reply is typically tart and direct: “Dyke from the Deep South? What do you think?” Nicky describes her as a “bitch with a bone”; the two are natural enemies, but they also share an almost unspoken resentment for the luxurious waters in which they find themselves swimming.
Far more comfortable in those waters is Chloe’s publisher and boss, Catherine Lancaster (Lorraine Toussaint, so good as the charismatic inmate Vee in “Orange Is the New Black”). Here she exudes the Oprah-like edge of a powerful mogul who doesn’t mind a good street fight. Both she and Gloria Reuben’s Michelle Sanders, the attorney hired by the sisters to defend Ethan, have a couple of ”What is wrong with these white women?” moments that arrive on time and on point.
Based on a novel by Alafair Burke, “The Better Sister” also boasts strong and seasoned female voices at the controls in executive producers and showrunners Regina Corrado and Olivia Milch. Corrado boasts production credits on sizzlers including “Sons of Anarchy,” “The Strain,” and “Mayor of Kingstown.” Milch is a descendent of TV royalty. Her father is David Milch, creator of “Deadwood” (on which Corrado was a staff writer), and a television maverick in every sense.
The younger Milch, whose writing credits also include the big-screen women’s heist caper “Ocean’s Eight,” has her own gift for dialogue and story structure, and for weaving a tapestry of themes — secrecy, social class, contemporary feminism, corruption, regret — into a cohesive and, most importantly, entertaining package. And it feels like it could have a future: Even with this particular case closed, these two appear to have plenty more to work out, and perhaps even accomplish together.
THE BETTER SISTER
Starring Jessica Biel, Elizabeth Banks, Corey Stoll, Maxwell Acee Donovan, Nan Guidry, Lorraine Toussaint, Matthew Modine, Bobby Naderi, Frederick Weller, Gloria Reuben, and Janel Maloney. On Prime Video. Premieres May 28.
Chris Vognar, a freelance culture writer, was the 2009 Nieman Arts and Culture Fellow at Harvard University.
