Rose Byrne Leads Peacock’s Mystery Thriller The Good Daughter, One of Its Best Shows: Review

Two sisters face their past

Charlie works as a public defender in Pikeville, representing local teenagers whose families cannot afford legal help. Sam left for New York and built a career in patent law, but returns when their father’s health and Charlie’s insistence bring her home.

The sisters’ reunion is tense and often funny. Charlie keeps moving rather than confronting the past, while Sam shields her troubled interior with a dismissive manner. Their clashes reflect both Sam’s decision to leave and Charlie’s resistance to accepting help.

A town shaped by violence

The story moves between the present and the sisters’ childhood, connecting two violent events twenty years apart. Their father, Rusty, is a defense attorney who represents people the town has already condemned; that work puts his family in danger in both timelines.

The current case centers on a teenage girl from the Holler, whom local opinion has judged before the facts are clear. Charlie witnesses the scene, Rusty takes the defense, and Sam becomes involved after returning to Georgia. The series eventually explains what the girl did and why, while the family’s history takes longer to resolve.

Bright setting, careful performances

Pikeville is shown in bright daylight, with lush scenery and red clay, rather than the darkness often associated with Southern crime stories. Childhood scenes are so brightly lit that their edges appear bleached, lending the sisters’ memories an unsettling quality.

Fahy plays Charlie’s charm and recklessness as defenses, while Byrne keeps Sam reserved until the story needs her to act. Brendan Gleeson plays Rusty, Olivia Williams portrays Gamma in the childhood timeline, and Michael Dorman plays Charlie’s estranged husband, Ben. Harper Steele makes her first on-camera appearance as family friend Lenore.

Slaughter wrote all six scripts herself, adapting her 2017 novel after seeing other works of hers adapted. The parallel timelines keep the case moving while emphasizing how people with influence can use local institutions, including the courts, to decide who is believed.