Not even Rose Byrne can save this schlocky and relentless legal drama

Set in a small Georgia town full of secrets, corrupt cops and horrific violence that scar generations, The Good Daughter evokes the American literary lineage of the Southern Gothic. Not in terms of quality, but the quantity of its traumas – and its characters’ frequent quoting of Flannery O’Connor.

Adapted by Karin Slaughter from her best-selling thriller of the same name, The Good Daughter is a six-episode onslaught of violence that frequently stretches believability. It would be hard to recommend the series if not for its magnetic cast led by Meghann Fahy and Rose Byrne, who add tenderness and care into a somewhat callous, schlocky layering of traumas.

At the show’s centre are the Quinns: defence attorney Rusty (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughters who have followed him into law, Charlie (Fahy) and Sam (Byrne).

They were a family of four. As seen in The Good Daughter’s opening flashback to their childhood, the sisters’ relentlessly clever mother (Olivia Williams) was murdered in front of them before they were both attacked in a home invasion by two teenage boys.

Minutes later, The Good Daughter follows the adult Charlie as she witnesses a school shooting committed by Kelly, a teenager with an intellectual disability (Shayna Benardo, absolutely heartbreaking).

Given Charlie’s a witness and Rusty lands in hospital after being stabbed by an unknown enemy, Sam arrives reluctantly from New York to take Kelly’s case. With a sharp black bob, sheathed in artfully shapeless black clothing, Sam – now a patent lawyer – presents as the cold, prim-lipped opposite of Charlie, a warm-hearted country attorney driven by a sharp sense of justice.

The only visible clue as to Sam’s past is a slight limp that occasionally requires a cane – sleek, retractable and stored in her handbag – as well as chic prescription glasses that a local judge demands she take off. It’s one of many indignities the Quinns face, the town full of power-abusive police and furious locals who say they are lying about the attack.

All a little relentless, right? There’s nothing wrong with a series examining how violence compounds and weighs down survivors – and it’s a credit to the cast, including Audrey Grace Marshall and Drew Cheek playing the Quinns in flashbacks, that The Good Daughter lets its audience feel that suffocating force, too.

The series isn’t humourless, either. Charlie is fond of a crude swear or explicit joke, while all three Quinns, in addition to quoting O’Connor and Emily Dickinson, are sharp-tongued. “Velma? Your sister’s clearly a Daphne,” says Rusty, correcting Sam’s jab.

But even the cutesy one-liners are emblematic of what frustrated me throughout The Good Daughter – for a show about untangling so much trauma, there’s never any real sense of mess.

The Good Daughter streams on Stan from November 13.

*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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