Starring Michelle Monahan in a dizzying dual role, “Echoes” features identical twin babies Leni and Gina, who have spent years perfecting the strangest sister act possible: Going away together for his or her birthday each year, after that trading places to spend the next 12 months living each other’s lifestyles.
Whenever one of them goes lacking, however , it starts a door not only to potentially revealing the ruse but raises thorny questions about their previous, which comes leaking out in a number of flashbacks — including the death of their mother and a fatal open fire — and pulls the attention of the nearby sheriff (Karen Robinson), the only character who seems to be having any fun.
Produced by “13 Reasons Why’s” John Yorkey, “Echoes” includes a solid cast, including Matt Bomer plus Daniel Sunjata as the twins’ respective husbands, and Michael O’Neill as their stoic yet concerned dad.
As is so frequently true of these higher concepts, though, the series feels more and more tortured down the extend, to the point where the switching which-sister-did-what beats don’t necessarily become hard to follow but rather problem your patience in terms of being motivated to test. That’s despite Monahan’s latest addition to the particular long list of stars who have conducted each sides of a conversation to some stunt dual.
Netflix gets plenty of mileage out of these kind of mysteries, but for most of its contortionist-worthy twists and turns, “Echoes” begins looking like an enticing plunge and doesn’t quite pull itself out of the shallow end of that gene pool.
“Bad Siblings, ” meanwhile, is a much more intricate create, but boils down to an easy question: Who and what killed the horrible husband of one of five unusually close sisters, all of who have reason in order to despise him separate from the fact that they hate the way he or she treats their cousin?
Created by and co-starring Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe”) as the eldest of the bunch, the show furthermore features Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene and Eve Hewson since the plotting quartet.
Still, the pivotal role goes to Claes Beat ( “The Northman, ” “Dracula”) since the quietly loathsome Sara Paul, who torments his wife (Anne-Marie Duff) and quietly plots to damage and undermine her siblings, including Horgan’s Eva, with whom he works.
Darkly funny, the show works in different time frames, with the later component involving a pair of insurance plan agents (Brian Gleeson, Daryl McCormack) persuaded that foul perform was involved in John Paul’s demise. However for them, John Paul is such a committed jerk the sisters not necessarily alone in having reason to want to see him out of the picture.
There is certainly an almost Rasputin-like quality to the sisters’ initially hapless efforts, along with Eva at 1 point noting — when someone proposes staging a work-related accident — “What are we going to do, paper reduce him to dying? ”
Adapted from a Belgian series, the story drags a bit too much on the way, getting lost among a maze of side alleys and subplots. And while those threads come together properly at the finish, probably the most apt recent assessment would be another Apple company entry, “The Afterparty, ” which also contained interesting twists but took too long to disgorge its secrets.
For all that, “Bad Sisters” supplies a stronger payoff compared to “Echoes” and seems less far-fetched, which goes a long way in helping justify the purchase. In the realm associated with streaming, as with family members, those are the type of ties that situation.
“Echoes” and “Bad Sisters” premiere August. 19 on Netflix and Apple TV+, respectively. Disclosure: My partner works for a device of Apple.