Brendan Gleeson's Sad Toilet Fart Steals The Good Daughter

Brendan Gleeson delivers the single best moment in The Good Daughter — and, according to the Guardian's review, it is a sad toilet fart. The newspaper's television critic has delivered a scathing verdict on the Sky Atlantic and Now legal thriller, reserving praise for exactly one element: Gleeson's performance as a broken small-town defence lawyer nicknamed, in the review's words, "Shatticus Finch".

The series stars Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy as Sam and Charlie Quinn, two headstrong lawyer daughters of Gleeson's Rusty Quinn. The Guardian's central criticism is blunt: "For a drama that is meant to explore female trauma, Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy are given very little to do as small-town lawyers." The two actresses, the review argues, are sidelined in a show ostensibly built around their characters' suffering.

What works — and what the critic says does not

Gleeson, by contrast, "steals the show" as the sisters' father. The review lingers on his Rusty Quinn, introduced grumbling in stretched deep-south vowels: "Why is ma laaahf filled with contrary feee-males?" The critic describes him as "this sunken beanbag of fading masculinity", a dilapidated lawyer whose cluttered desk and drawling complaints anchor the show's comic texture.

The Quinn family dynamic, as the review sketches it, runs on affectionate abuse:

• "This is all bullshit," snaps Sam, the elder daughter played by Byrne.
• "You're a dipshit," adds Charlie, played by Fahy — "thoughtfully", the critic notes.
• Rusty responds with excruciating aphorisms, among them "Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day".

How the plot frames the trauma

The Guardian outlines the premise with equal economy. A school shooting forces the Quinn family to confront a long-buried tragedy, and the sisters — who, the review notes, at least tolerate their father — pull together. The whole town, the critic writes with a heavy dose of irony, needs them. Charlie's establishing line, quoted in the review, is: "We're the only lawyers that don't roll over for the local cops!"

From there, the verdict turns harsh. The reviewer dismisses The Good Daughter as "a steaming hillock of 'smalltown secrets' bunkum", comparing it unfavourably to a formula product: the series, the critic writes, "fulfils precisely the same purpose as a Harlan Coben adaptation".

What does this change for viewers?

For anyone deciding whether to press play on Sky Atlantic or Now, the review offers a clear calculation: watch it for Gleeson, not for the women the marketing puts front and centre. A drama that promises female trauma but hands its richest material to the male scene-stealer has, on this critic's evidence, its priorities inverted — and viewers who skip it will miss, at minimum, one celebrated fart.