Image via Elena Ternovaja / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Rose Byrne at the Berlin International Film Festival, February 2025, where she won the Silver Bear for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.
The Good Daughter is out today on Peacock, all six episodes at once. It is the latest Karin Slaughter book to reach the screen, and the early reviews are split down the middle.
Meghann Fahy plays Charlotte "Charlie" Quinn, a lawyer pulled back to her Georgia hometown by a school shooting. Rose Byrne plays her estranged sister Sam, and Brendan Gleeson plays their father Rusty, a defence attorney who takes on the shooter's case. The three of them carry the show, and the critics agree on that much. Where they split is on everything around them.
The story
Twenty years ago, a violent home invasion killed the Quinn sisters' mother and left the family scarred. Charlie got out and built a life as a lawyer. Sam stayed closer to the past. Then a shooting at a school in their hometown of Pikeville pulls Charlie back, and Rusty agrees to defend the shooter in court. Sam comes home too, and the secrets the family buried twenty years ago start coming up again.
The show is based on Karin Slaughter's 2017 novel of the same name. Slaughter adapted it herself, wrote all six episodes and runs the show. Steph Green directs all six. It was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, from March to June 2025.
What the critics are saying
The scores tell the story. At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes has it at 57% from seven critics, and Metacritic has it at 55 out of 100 from eight critics, which it calls "mixed or average". That puts it below Slaughter's other screen work — Will Trent sits at 89% and Pieces of Her at 51% — and the reviews themselves explain why.
| Outlet | Score | What they said |
|---|---|---|
| ScreenRant | 3/10 | A "trauma-saturated mess" and a "tonally chaotic thriller that revels way too much in female trauma" — though the first episode hooks you, and Fahy is singled out for a strong performance. |
| The A.V. Club | Negative | "A weak Karin Slaughter adaptation" that "lacks the emotional heft needed to balance its incessant shock value". Fahy is "the undisputed MVP", and the scenes between Byrne and Fahy are where the show "finds its footing". |
| TheWrap | Mixed-positive | "A tense thriller that mostly succeeds" with "nearly all the performances" stellar — but "gaping plot holes" and a clichéd backwoods-town setting. Still "worth the time". |
| TIME | Mixed | Byrne, Gleeson and Fahy are "great actors, but there's only so much they can do for a script built on coincidence and contrivance". |
| Heaven of Horror | 4/5 | "The entire series is brilliant" — the warmest take so far. |
| Financial Times | 3/5 | "Works best as a family drama" rather than a thriller. |
Read them together and one line of agreement stands out: Fahy is the standout, Byrne and Gleeson are strong, and the show leans too hard on trauma, coincidence and plot holes. The Hollywood Reporter puts it kindly — the three leads "at least made it possible to care about the people to whom these things were happening".
The cast
| Actor | Character |
|---|---|
| Meghann Fahy | Charlotte "Charlie" Quinn |
| Rose Byrne | Samantha "Sam" Quinn (also an executive producer) |
| Brendan Gleeson | Rusty Quinn, their father |
| Olivia Williams | Harriet, their mother |
| Michael Dorman | Ben, Charlie's estranged husband |
| Harper Steele | Lenore |
| Jake McDorman | Huck / Mason |
| Audrey Grace Marshall | Young Sam |
| Drew Cheek | Young Charlie |
Byrne is not just in front of the camera here. She is also an executive producer on the show, alongside Slaughter, Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky, Casey Haver, Steph Green and Michelle Purple. It is a big year for her either way — she won the Golden Globe in January for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and picked up her first Oscar nomination for the same role.
How it got here
The show was announced in March 2024 with Jessica Biel attached to star. Biel left that September, and Byrne and Fahy joined in December 2024. That swap changed the shape of the show — two sisters at the centre instead of one lead — and the casting is the part the reviews keep praising.
For Slaughter, this is her third book on screen after Pieces of Her on Netflix and Will Trent on ABC. The Good Daughter is the darkest of the three, and the closest to the novel's own tone: a family drama first, a thriller second, with the violence always close to the surface.
When and where to watch
| The Good Daughter | Details |
|---|---|
| Premiere | Thursday 12 November 2026, all six episodes at once |
| Where | Peacock |
| Episodes | 6, limited series |
| Based on | Karin Slaughter's 2017 novel The Good Daughter |
| Showrunner | Karin Slaughter (wrote all six episodes) |
| Director | Steph Green (all six episodes) |
| Stars | Meghann Fahy, Rose Byrne, Brendan Gleeson |
All six episodes are up now, so the whole story is there to watch in one sitting. The reviews say to go in for the three leads and the family at the centre of it — and to expect a show that is heavy on trauma and light on tidy answers.
Read More: Meghann Fahy Biography, Age, Net Worth, Partner & The Good Daughter
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