Messy family drama can make for very entertaining storytelling, especially if there’s any kind of crime involved. In the new Prime Video limited series “The Better Sister,” based on the novel of the same name by Alafair Burke, family secrets become very public fodder when lawyer, father, and husband Adam Macintosh (Corey Stoll) is brutally murdered. Now his wife Chloe (Jessica Biel), the editor-in-chief of a fictional magazine, is left to pick up the pieces and potentially try to clear her own name. There’s just one problem: her husband Adam is also her estranged sister Nicky’s (Elizabeth Banks) ex-husband, and she’s been raising Nicky and Adam’s son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan) almost as if he were her own. Ugly family secrets being revealed could derail what’s left of Chloe’s perfect little life, and now she will have to fight for it all. 

The series was created by Craig Gillespie, who has previously done some great work when telling stories about women who were wronged by the world in some way, from “Cruella” to “Pam & Tommy,” and it seems like he’s tapped into that talent once more because despite only being out for one day, “The Better Sister” is already at the top of Prime Video’s streaming charts.  

While “The Better Sister” feels like a true crime story ripped from the headlines, it’s a fully fictional tale that nonetheless has many of the same themes and tropes. Biel is no stranger to the true crime miniseries, having played the title character in Hulu’s “Candy,” while Banks recently portrayed an aesthetician looking to kill the competition in “Skincare,” which was inspired by a true story. Seeing them face off as sisters is honestly a good bit of fun. Making things more complicated for the sisters is Detective Nancy Guidry, played by the always-great Kim Dickens, who also played a detective in the similarly chilly true-crime influenced thriller “Gone Girl.” 

Maybe people are really just thirsting for salacious thrillers that make our own families seem a little less troubled, or maybe it’s the true crime ties and killer cast and creative team, but either way, “The Better Sister” is getting people interested. The limited series’ many twists and turns have already inspired a million ending explainers, and from the looks of things, the ending is going to have even more people talking when they’ve finished binge-watching all eight episodes. I, for one, am always interested in Banks and Biel being complicated baddies on the big or small screen.