SisterS, created, written by and starring real-life best friends Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley, is back on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player tonight for a second season.
After season one took place in Ireland, the action now moves to Canada, where the show takes a deep dive into themes of fertility, motherhood, the impact of repressed grief, intergenerational trauma, and self-acceptance, all explored through a comedic lens.
Goldberg said it felt especially rewarding to know the first series was well received and that audiences were eager for more.
"It's great to know that there’s an appetite and an audience and people want more," she told RTÉ Entertainment. "We worked so hard trying to get the thing made, it was hard at the time to celebrate it coming out because you’re still kind of recovering from birthing the thing," she laughed.
"We were so excited just to have made it that we didn't pay much attention to things like ratings. So when season two came around, we were surprised but thrilled. We’d spent six years getting the project off the ground, and then suddenly they greenlit it and said, 'Can you shoot this in six months?’. The celebration was immediately followed by fear about how we could truncate the way we work."
Reflecting on the production process, she explained how the approach to the second season was a significant departure from the first. "We had a very different set-up for season two. We hired a writers' room, we built the village and padded it ourselves," she added, highlighting the changes behind the scenes.
When they learned a second series was on the way, Stanley admits the excitement was quickly tempered by practical concerns about their busy lives.
"It's funny with the season two news. It was so unexpected. We were so proud of the show, and once we had a bit of recovery time - to recover from the trauma, or the privilege, of making it," she giggled, "we didn’t expect to get a season two. We certainly hoped for it, but when they told us, it was a really exciting moment… until the realisation hit: how the hell are we going to do it? The first one took us six years, and now we have kids."
SisterS is about trying to find your true family, but looking in all the wrong places. This season digs deeper into what happens when life doesn’t give you what you want and what it takes to wake up to the fact that you have what you need.
Goldberg said the upcoming season is "sympathetically relevant to our lives, but narratively fictionalised".
Stanley explained that she can relate to elements of her character's journey and admits she had significant input in the writers’ room.
"There’s obviously a fertility storyline about Suze going it alone, trying to freeze her eggs and navigating that journey, and that’s something I experienced myself," she said. "So when I joined the writers’ room, and we were discussing ideas, that experience was very fresh in my mind. Naturally, part of that is embedded in the show."
Goldberg added that becoming mothers around the same time influenced the series’ narrative and that structuring the themes thoughtfully was very important to them.
"We had babies six weeks apart - intentionally," she joked. "We were in the throes of early motherhood when we got the news, so of course that affected everything. Story-wise, it definitely played a role. We wanted to explore themes of motherhood, particularly motherhood on your own terms, which was really important to us. Even the choice to become a mother, and not taking that for granted, is central, along with the idea of generational motherhood."
The duo are clearly a force to be reckoned with. Driven and determined, they know how to seize life with both hands, yet remain firmly grounded. So what does the coming year hold for them?
"Well, I turned forty, and I met a woman in her sixties who gave me a really intense lecture about lifting weights before menopause," Goldberg enthused. "So I wake up every morning, and her voice is echoing in my brain. I've purchased the weights, but I have not lifted the weights," she laughed. "But I would like to find physical strength; that would be a goal."
Stanley said she wants to feel lighter and savour the small things in life, adding: "Last year was incredibly intense because the baby was so small, I'm a solo mum, we were in post-production for six months after the show. It was a really busy year, and I think when you're really busy, and you're squeezed, things can feel really tough, right? This year, I want to stay a bit lighter and more hopeful because I think, as well, what's happening in the world is just terrifying everywhere you look, and as a parent, you have to have almost a pathological level of compartmentalisation, but I am choosing hope and light."
Sophie Thompson and Donal Logue also reprise their roles as Sheryl and Jimmy, respectively, in the six-episode, thirty-minute series. Barbara Brennan also joins the cast as Ma Baker.
Other stars include Sonja Smits, Jim Annan, Dylan Taylor, Vanessa Matsui, Peter Keleghan and Linda Kash, playing Sare’s Canadian family.
SisterS airs on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on 29 January at 10.15pm.
