Roku Picks Up ‘The Walsh Sisters’

Author Marian Keyes has been having a moment in the U.K. The best-selling author had two of her works picked up for adaptation within a year. In early 2024, Netflix commissioned Keyes’ 2020 novel, Grown Ups, which features the Casey and Kinsella families; then, in early 2025, the BBC commissioned an adaptation of Rachel’s Holiday, the best-known novel of her other series, which follows the Walsh family.

Filming for the Netflix series has wrapped, and it is expected to arrive sometime in 2027. However, the BBC series, titled The Walsh Sisters, released its first season in February 2026 and is well into working on the already-commissioned Season 2. Unfortunately for U.S. audiences, the BBC version, despite arriving first, didn’t get picked up for American distribution ahead of its premiere, and the series has languished in the wings, hoping Season 2, or the forthcoming Netflix series, will entice someone to pick it up.

It’s unclear which of those proved the deciding factor, but with Season 2 expected on the BBC soon, The Walsh Sisters finally has an American platform. Roku has picked it up and will stream the show on its rebranded streaming platform, Howdy.

For those who don’t use a Roku stick to access apps on their TV, the company launched Howdy in mid-2025 partly to differentiate Roku the Hardware from Roku the Streaming App. The rebrand also let Roku start charging a monthly subscription fee; before Howdy’s launch, Roku the Streaming App, technically known as “The Roku Channel,” was a FAST network (Free Ad-Supported Television). Howdy simply offered the same shows ad-free, for $2.99 a month.

The Howdy ploy didn’t make much of a dent in the streaming landscape, as it was painfully mistimed. (The current trend is that consumers are paying less and accepting more ads, not the other way around.) In the end, it won’t matter; Roku ended up on the mergers-and-acquisitions table and is in the middle of being bought by Tubi owner Fox, a deal expected to close in the first half of 2027. Since that announcement, Roku has only made a couple of moves as it waits to be swallowed whole. The biggest is canceling The Great American Baking Show, ending its deal with Love Productions. The second is picking up The Walsh Sisters, which the streaming service will launch as a weekly series (a first for the streaming service) in November 2026, with Season 2 planned to arrive around the same time as in the U.K.

Here’s the Season 1 synopsis:

Inspired by five of the novels from celebrated Irish author and global bestseller, Marian Keyes, The Walsh Sisters features the chaotic, dysfunctional but deeply loveable Walsh family of five sisters, a devout mother and a bemused father.

Set in their Dublin hometown, the drama follows Anna, Rachel, Maggie, Claire and Helen as they navigate the peaks and troughs of their 20s and 30s. This sisterhood is full of in-jokes, hand-me-down resentments, and more than a few old wounds. But their DNA, history, and shared love of power ballads keep the Walsh sisters together in the face of heartbreak, grief, addiction, and parenthood.

The cast of The Walsh Sisters features Caroline Menton (All Creatures Great & Small) as middle sister Rachel; Louisa Harland (Derry Girls) as second youngest Anna; Máiréad Tyers (Extraordinary) as the baby of the family, Helen; Danielle Galligan (Obituary) as eldest Claire, with Stefanie Preissner (Finding Joy) as mum’s favorite, second sister Maggie.

Carrie Crowley (The Quiet Girl) plays Mammy Walsh; Irish-American actor Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall) is Daddy Walsh. The cast also includes Jay Duffy (The Wheel of Time), Samuel Anderson (Doctor Who), Gina Moxley (Game of Thrones), and American actress Debi Mazar (Kaos). Season 2 will add Peter Coonan (Bad Sisters), Aislín McGuckin (Normal People), Art Campion (Blue Lights), and Fay Ripley (Suspects).

Preissner pulls double duty, serving as lead writer on the series and adapting four episodes, with Kefi Chadwick (Rivals) taking the other two. Director Ian Fitzgibbon (Hullraisers) helms all installments. Preissner and Keyes executive produce with Tony Baines, plus David Crean & Dermot Horan for RTÉ, Dixie Linder & Nick Marston for Cuba Pictures, James Durie & Tom Misselbrook for Cineflix Rights, and David McLoughlin for Metropolitan Films.

The Walsh Sisters Season 1 debuts on Howdy on Thursday, November 5, 2026, and will stream one episode a week through mid-December. Season 2 is expected out in the first half of 2027.

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