{"id":49619,"date":"2025-09-29T00:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T00:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/49619\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T00:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T00:11:07","slug":"a-poor-attempt-to-bring-marian-keyes-best-selling-novels-to-the-screen-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/49619\/","title":{"rendered":"A poor attempt to bring Marian Keyes\u2019 best-selling novels to the screen \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a shame The Walsh Sisters (RT\u00c9 One<\/a>, Sunday 9.30pm) doesn\u2019t do a better job of bringing Marian Keyes<\/a>\u2019 best-selling novels about five Dublin<\/a> siblings to the screen. The books are adored, but this adaptation runs aground on a lack of chemistry between the leads, who seem less like beloved sisters than strangers who live under the same roof by force of circumstance. <\/p>\n

You also have to wonder if there was A budget. Several scenes chronicling the sisters\u2019 late-night escapades appear to have been shot on the Fair City set and do an unconvincing job capturing the bustle and edge of Dublin nightlife. It all feels cheap and disposable when Keyes fans will have wanted something more sumptuous and fully realised. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Behind the scenes with Marian Keyes on the set of The Walsh Sisters: \u2018They\u2019re exactly as I imagined them\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Adapted from Keyes\u2019 novels Rachel\u2019s Holiday and Anybody Out There, the six-part series introduces us to sisters Anna (Louise Harland), Rachel (Caroline Menton), Claire (Danielle Galligan<\/a>), Helen (M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Tyers<\/a>) and Maggie (Stefanie Preissner<\/a>, who also wrote the script with Kefi Chadwick). <\/p>\n

The idea is that the Walsh sisters are as thick as anything. But at no point do you believe that they grew up together. Tyers seems under instructions to speak in her own Cork<\/a> accent, for instance, while Galligan sounds like the living embodiment of Dublin 4<\/a> privilege. It isn\u2019t that they belong in different shows so much as that they\u2019ve beamed down from separate universes. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s never pleasant to say this, but The Walsh Sisters also has a weird attitude towards middle-aged women, as embodied by Carrie Crowley\u2019s performance as the sisters\u2019 embittered mother. The cliche of the Irish mother who hates her daughters feels a bit long in the tooth and, I\u2019m sure, does not reflect the reality for most Irish people. <\/p>\n

The series could have done without it. Crowley comes across as uncomfortable in the part, which perhaps explains her one-note performance. I could be wrong, and maybe the layers will be peeled back in future episodes, but in part one, at least, her character is distracting and inauthentic. <\/p>\n

The Walsh Sisters also suffers from a bad case of \u201cdid you leave the immersion on?\u201d syndrome, whereby tropes of Irish life are exaggerated to the point where they become unrecognisable. There\u2019s an ongoing joke about Mammy Walsh having a \u201cgood room\u201d \u2013 but, outside of Reddit, has any Irish person referred to their livingroom as such? It\u2019s like stumbling upon a Twitter feed from 10 years ago foundering under an excess of Tayto references. Meanwhile, as the father, Aidan Quinn dials the \u201cdozy Irish dad\u201d routine up to 12. <\/p>\n

Where The Walsh Sisters does well is in grappling with addiction. Rachel is on a drug- and booze-fuelled path to self-destruction, and this has driven a wedge between her and her boyfriend, Luke (Jay Duffy). Her downward spiral is powerfully portrayed and reminds us that addiction is not confined to any particular segment of society. Sadly, in other respects, The Walsh Sisters does not convince. Oh brother, does this feel like a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a shame The Walsh Sisters (RT\u00c9 One, Sunday 9.30pm) doesn\u2019t do a better job of bringing Marian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[36086,42,36087,13693,43,6085,34309,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-49619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-danielle-galligan","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-mairead-tyers","11":"tag-marian-keyes","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-rte","14":"tag-stefanie-preissner","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}