Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy Anchor Peacock's Harrowing 'The Good Daughter'

By Elena Vasquez

Peacock releases all six episodes of "The Good Daughter" on Thursday, November 12. Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy star as crime-solving sisters. The limited series joins a streamer streak of women-led thrillers dating back to 2022.

That lineage is longer than it looks. It includes "Angelyne" (2022), showrun by Allison Miller and starring Emmy Rossum; "Apples Never Fall" (2024), adapted from Liane Moriarty's novel with Annette Bening as a missing mother; and the Emmy-nominated "All Her Fault" (2025), a Sarah Snook showcase that Vulture called a "misandrist masterpiece." Two 2025 entries — Susanna Fogel's critical favorite "Ponies," with Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson as the CIA's first female spies in the Soviet Union, and "Long Bright River," co-created by Liz Moore and Nikki Toscano with Amanda Seyfried — round out the run. In plain terms: five women-led thrillers in four years.

What is 'The Good Daughter' about?

The series is set in fictional Pikesville, Georgia. Charlie (Fahy) works as a public defender beside her father, private defense attorney Rusty Quinn (Brendan Gleeson). Their mother, called Gamma (Olivia Williams), was murdered in front of her daughters when they were children. The attack left Sam (Byrne) with dysarthria, a lifelong motor speech disorder, plus impaired vision and a limp.

Sam escaped to New York and a career in patent law. She returns only when Rusty calls for the first time to say Charlie needs help. The immediate trauma: a school shooting Charlie witnessed that killed the principal and a 13-year-old student. That shooting and a flashback to their mother's murder fill the first 15 minutes of the premiere.

The sisters then mount a defense for the shooter, Kelly Wilson (Shayna Benardo), an 18-year-old student with an intellectual disability. A teacher (Jake McDorman) saves Kelly from trigger-happy cops at the scene. A district attorney later argues for the death penalty, competency laws be damned. The Quinn family stands nearly alone against the Coins, a powerful local dynasty, with help only from Rusty's friend Lenore (Harper Steele) and Charlie's husband, assistant district attorney Ben (Michael Dorman).

Does the series work?

Partially. Karin Slaughter adapted her own book; Steph Green ("Duster," "Dare Me") directed every episode. The critic's verdict: the finale hoards too many revelations and delivers an exposition-heavy ending that reads like an endless list of answers. The plotting "skews into overkill well before it's done doling out distress," and the resolution never justifies its upsetting subject matter.

The cast rescues it. Byrne and Gleeson internalize their showy character quirks — Sam's limp, vision impairment and stutter; Rusty's Flannery O'Connor quotes and a clown nose he pops on for levity — so they never define the characters. Gleeson builds from these strange choices "a heartbroken widower who just wants to give his traumatized children the light they need in an ever-darkening world."

The dialogue lands hardest. Gleeson gets "Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day"; Byrne tells a patronizing windbag "to shit in both hands and start clapping." The sisterly banter rings true, and their investigation carries a buddy-cop dynamic the review argues deserves a second series.

Not a second season of this one, though. The reviewer's closing pitch: another thriller with Byrne and Fahy as two crusading women cracking a case and destroying the patriarchy — based on an easier read.