Eve is still killing it with deliciously bleak new series
Killing Eve
Season 2, episode 1/BBC America
The first season of postmodern spy caper Killing Eve was a deliciously transgressive highwire act in which comedy and cruelty, farce and horror, exterior glamour and interior ugliness circled one another in mutual fascination. Could this dazzling feat of conjuring be sustained as BBC America’s surprise hit reintroduced MI6 operative Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and her hit-woman nemesis Villanelle (Jodie Comer)?
There wasn’t much time to ponder. Season two – which has yet to receive an official UK airdate – picked up 30 seconds after Eve had driven a blade into the object of her obsession in Villanelle’s Paris apartment.
Fresh from defrocking viewers of their innocence on Fleabag, producer and writer Phoebe Waller-bridge has scarcely had an opportunity to draw breath before plunging once again into Killing
Eve’s yin-yang universe. She does so as executive producer, with actressturned-dramatist Emerald Fennell taking over admirably as head writer. Fennell’s Killing Eve script was a
Through the Looking-glass take on James Bond and le Carré that had the sharpness and menacing sparkle of a scalpel.
Having ditched her unwittingly pocketed blade in a Gare du Nord loo, Eve was soon back to London. Villanelle, meanwhile, woke in a Parisian hospital alongside a shy young man who had lost half his face in an unrelated car-crash. Killing Eve is adapted from the
Codename Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings. But, as was the case in season one, storyline was largely an afterthought. With utter predictability, Villanelle used her skills to escape the hospital (having helped sad Gabriel come to terms with his disfigurement in her own special way) and set off on the trail of Eve. And her quarry was brought back into the fold by spymaster Carolyn Martins (Fiona Shaw), the slippery MI6 boss who had sacked her star
operative as Eve’s Villanelle fixation dangerously spiralled.
Just as contrived was the attempt to progress the plot by having Eve solve a death that Villanelle was obviously responsible for. The episode was spinning its wheels in order to give Eve something to do.
Killing Eve did, however, make the most of its charming leads. Oh won a Golden Globe for her season one performance, and she was again irresistible as a flustered everywoman entangled in an international espionage conspiracy.
And Comer remained hypnotic as a chilling killing machine draped in the couture ruffles of brutalised glamour. Everything else – the hazy plot, often thinly-drawn supporting characters, an intrusive retro soundtrack – was irrelevant.
The other question, of course, is when UK audiences will have an opportunity to resume acquaintances with Waller-bridge’s gallery of lethal weirdos. Killing Eve has received a simultaneous world wide release with the notable exception of its country of origin. However, with Comer due on the Graham Norton Show in midapril, a UK air date is surely soon to be confirmed.
What this deliriously bleak series opener confirms is that Killing Eve can’t come home fast enough. Killing Eve is on BBC America on Sundays at 8pm. A UK viewing date is expected to be announced this month