TV Review - The Sister

Russell Tovey (Looking and Being Human) stars as Nathan Redman, a car salesman who used to work at a radio station. He's a man with a secret, a deadly secret, or at least a secret that would make him want to kill himself. It opens with a suicide attempt in 2013. The series, directed by Niall MacCormick and written by Neil Cross, based on his 2009 novel Burial, then jumps forward to show what Nathan does as a result of his secret. It also jumps backward in time to show what that secret is and what led up to it. As the series goes along, the fear is that this secret will be revealed. How that goes about and the twists that get knotted or the layers that get peeled make this series feel very much like an Alfred Hitchcock film. The fourth and final episode in particular feels like Hitchcock's hand was guiding every beat and every moment. There's a ticking clock tension in the third and penultimate episode that definitely felt Hitchcock inspired, but the fourth and final episode really sells it by ratcheting up the suspense in its mood, music and editing.

Even before Hitchcock's hand becomes apparent, the first thoughts were to Edgar Allan Poe and specifically his short story The Tell-Tale Heart. If one knows the plot of that Poe short story, then one can guess at some of the themes here. The themes are definitely paranoia and guilt, same as in the Poe story. It's also a bit of a spoiler to make that comparison, but, given Tovey's performance and context clues in the first episode, it's not difficult to guess that like in that Poe story, the protagonist here is believed to be a murderer. Like that Poe story, he might also be an unreliable narrator, but, unlike that Poe story, Nathan being an unreliable narrator might not be his own fault or his own doing.

Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Baghdad Central) co-stars as Bob Morrow, a professor who Nathan met when he worked at the radio station. Bob is a professor who is obsessed with the supernatural, particularly the afterlife. Bob himself has long dark hair and has a very Goth look about him. He essentially believes in ghosts and spirits. One night in 2020, Bob visits Nathan and delivers to him what he thinks is evidence of the existence of ghosts and spirits. Nathan doesn't believe it, but Bob becomes driven to convince Nathan otherwise.

Amrita Acharia (Game of Thrones and The Good Karma Hospital) also co-stars as Holly Fox, an estate agent who is dealing with the fact that her sister, Elise, went missing after a New Year's Eve party in 2009. One of her friends is a police detective who has been investigating the case for over a decade. She was able to get over her depression and grief about her missing sister when she started dating Nathan a few years after her sister disappeared. What Holly doesn't know is that Nathan was one of the persons that the police interviewed about her sister's disappearance.

What Holly also doesn't know is that Bob was also a person that the police interviewed. It's why Bob is shocked when he finds Nathan and discovers that he's dating the sister of the girl who went missing. He finds it strange because it's revealed that both he and Nathan were the last two people to see Holly's sister alive and now Bob believes it's the missing girl's ghost who is haunting him. It's creepy, but it's a ghost story that doesn't utilize the typical trappings of a ghost story or a horror story that has spirits or something. The series originally aired in the UK in 2020 and didn't come to the United States until 2021, but it is to me one of the best new series of the year.

Rated TV-MA-L.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 4 eps.

Available on Hulu.