Killing Eve, BBC1
Rating:
The second series of Killing Eve finally opened last night.
This award-winning drama has become the go-to show for anyone who has, down the years, hankered to see an assassin delicately murdering people while wearing beautiful dresses as an MI6 agent attempts to track her down.
Actually, no one hankered for it. Because, being unlike anything that has gone before, it’s the sort of series you couldn’t know you wanted until it arrived.
It is that thrillingly different. It is uniquely of itself and for that reason it has what so few TV shows have: swagger.
This award-winning drama has become the go-to show for anyone who has, down the years, hankered to see an assassin delicately murdering people while wearing beautiful dresses as an MI6 agent attempts to track her down. Pictured is Sandra Oh who plays Eve
If Killing Eve were a person, you’d know immediately it was the most interesting person in the room, simply by the way it walked in with an attitude saying: ‘I’m pleasing myself. Come along for the ride. Or don’t.’ I’m thinking if it were a person it would be Kate Bush. Or David Bowie, maybe.
It’s also a creeper. Unlike most series, which kick-off splashily then see the audience degrade, this began in a low-key way, then just grew and grew.
Killing Eve was initially adapted from Luke Jennings’ books by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag fame, who may be the smartest woman ever (sit on that, Mary Beard!). Waller-Bridge has now handed over to a new show runner, Emerald Fennell, who (perhaps bizarrely) played Nurse Patsy Mount in Call The Midwife.
Killing Eve is essentially a drama of tone: it is savage but strangely touching; outlandish but intimate; psychopathic but humane; and violent but blissfully funny.
If Killing Eve were a person, you’d know immediately it was the most interesting person in the room, simply by the way it walked in with an attitude. Pictured is Jodie Comer who plays Villanelle
The worry was that the tone would not be maintained. But it has. Series two doesn’t bother with any time-lapse nonsense. It picks up 30 seconds after we left off.
