Fine art to making a killing
SCREEN SCENE
AS I gain more and more mileage on the meter, I’m coming to understand the joys of a more, shall we say, sedate lifestyle.
Whereas Friday nights used to be a great opportunity to blow off steam with all the vigour of a runaway train, recent attempts to do so have resulted in lag time so prolonged and painful that it was a mighty effort just to work the Deliveroo app on my phone and get a burrito brought to my door.
No, better for this middle-aged chap to embrace the inevitable and celebrate the end of the working week with some more low-key thrills — either a nip of whisky or a cup of tea, and a little bit of homicide. On TV, of course, where there’s no shortage of it.
And it’s usually the fine folks at the ABC supplying the most wholesome of murders for our viewing pleasure.
There’s something to be said for the engaging but undemanding treat of watching, say, Miss Fisher or Doctor Blake crack a case. Someone has lost their life, true, but justice tends to be done within the hour and pretty much everything is right with the world.
With that in mind, there are times when even a viewer yearning for the cosy predictability of the conventional murder mystery may want to take a walk on the wilder side.
The ABC still has you covered in that regard, with one of its more recent shows. However it’s the digital iview platform that’s airing it, which allows for some lost weekend binge-watching of an entire series.
In this case, it’s Killing Eve, a BBC drama shaping up as one of the best-reviewed new shows of the year.
I have to admit it struck me as unusual — given the praise showered upon it by critics and fans overseas — that Killing Eve’s local run would be online rather than on TV.
But it did turn to be a canny move — and something of a blessing in disguise — because a weekly wait for the next episode could prove way too long for most viewers. Honestly, it’s hard to stop at one.
The Eve of the title is Eve Polastri, played by Sandra Oh, who’s clearly been itching to get under the skin of a character that offered as many dramatic opportunities as Grey’s Anatomy’s Cristina Yang and certainly gets the chance here.
Eve works for UK secret service agency MI5 but she’s not really loving her job; she’ll show up to an important meeting late and nursing a hangover.
But she does have an interest in murder and the people who commit it (an off-the-cuff question from her husband about how she’d hypothetically kill him results in a very detailed answer), which is how Villanelle (Jodie Comer) ends up on Eve’s radar.
Villanelle is a contract killer, and her chic, attractive bearing makes it all too easy to gain access to targets all over Europe. She’s precise, dangerous and probably a bit of a psychopath.
And Eve is pretty much the only person who believes she’s responsible for a lengthy hit list.
Given a top-secret assignment to pursue Villanelle, Eve becomes obsessed with her quarry. But things get a little twisted when Villanelle becomes just as obsessed with her hunter.
Killing Eve was adapted for the screen by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the actor and writer perhaps best known for her confronting drama Fleabag, and it crackles with a dark, unsettling wit that’ll make your laughter occasionally catch in your throat.
But it’s also the kind of compelling story that’ll not so much engross you as entangle you.
Luckily, if your internet connection is strong and stable, you won’t need to disentangle yourself for eight hours or so.
So if you’re intrigued, pour yourself that cup of tea — or maybe that nip of whisky — and venture over to the dark side of the street for a while.