KILLING EVE kills time nicely, but everything lacks believability ✭✭✭✩✩

BBC America’s hit crime drama finds two good actresses stuck in an increasingly unexciting cat-and-mouse game.

It’s strange when BBC America gets the world premiere of a British-made drama, as one expects the US cable channel to be showcasing the best UK television from across the pond… not making its own. But here we are, with an adaptation of Luke Jennings’s 2018 novel Codename Villanelle, which was actually a compilation of four e-book novellas he wrote between 2014–16.

This TV adaptation has been developed by none other than Phoebe Waller-Bridge, best known for writing and starring in BBC Three’s Fleabag (which streamed on Amazon Prime overseas). She also played droid L3–37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Killing Eve has tonal similarity to Waller-Bridge’s previous work, deploying a similar vein of black humour about relationships and femininity at times, but it’s nevertheless an unexpected departure that proves she has many strings to her bow.

Killing Eve concerns the eponymous Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), an MI5 employee taken under the wing of mentor Bill Pargrave (David Haig), living in London with her husband Niko (Owen McDonnell). Meanwhile, in mainstream Europe, deadly female assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) has started racking up a series of kills, on behalf of her Russian handler Konstantin Vasiliev (Kim Bodnia), and her work draws the attention of MI5’s Russian Section led by Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw). Eve theorises the killer they’re after is a woman, acting on a hunch dismissed by her supervisor Frank Haleton (Darren Boyd), so starts verifying her suspicion on her own time.

The first episode of the Killing Eve’s eight-part first season, “Nice Face”, does a fine job settling the table. It’s not exactly an original premise, but that means much of your brainpower can focus on getting to know the two opposing women at the heart of this story.

Naturally, Eve and Villanelle are different characters in all sorts of ways. Eve’s middle-aged with a loving husband, living a relatively normal life, helping British intelligence from the comfort of a desk; whereas Villanelle’s younger, single, glamorous, makes money by killing people for the criminal underworld, is more physically active in daily life, and generally doesn’t seem to have much regard for the norms of polite society.

I haven’t read the source material, but reviews of it are very mixed. The general feeling seems to be that they’re fun if you’re in the right mood, but the book’s described as hokum that doesn’t put much emphasis on well-rounded characterisations and suffers from a repetitive narrative.

In some ways I’m not sure why Sally Woodward Gentle (of Sid Gentle Films) optioned the novel for adaptation, as one could come up with a variation on the familiar cat-and-mouse game between an assassin and investigator. Maybe they couldn’t resist getting to name a villain ‘Villanelle’, or there are specific moments in the books it would be enormous fun to see brought to life. But if that’s true, I’m not sure which ones those were.

If you’ve read the books, let me know why you think they were deserving of adaptation, rather than just being an influence on a new idea. No spoilers!

Jodie Comer’s one of the best young actresses working today, always appearing in shows that instantly improve because her presence (My Mad Fat Diary, Thirteen, The White Princess). This series seems like a big vote of confidence in what she’s capable of, and gives her a rare opportunity to play someone who isn’t a victim.

Sandra Oh is an award-winning Canadian actress best-known for her long run on Grey’s Anatomy, but whose career hasn’t gone anywhere notable since she left that medical drama in 2014. Oh makes the biggest impression in the pilot, as she has more of a fleshed out character to play, whereas Comer just has to come across as enigmatic, beautiful, and believably deadly. There’s a moment involving stabbing someone in the eyeball that is sure to make you wince and cower. But this changes over the course of the eight episodes, as Comer’s devilish smiles and brazen attitude as Villanelle keeps finding new ways to surprise and delight… while Oh’s Eve just comes across as pretty dull and nowhere near the equal of the woman she’s after.

In some ways, the most interesting thing about Killing Eve remains the fact Phoebe Waller-Bridge is behind it and wrote four of these eight episodes. This is a very unexpected way for her to broaden her horizons, if you thought she was going to allow herself to be pigeonholed by the success of Fleabag. A series she’s yet to return to, having written a psychosexual serial killer crime drama between playing a robot fighting for equal rights.

It’s great that a drama about two women has been masterminded by a woman, and one assumes Waller-Bridge strengthened Luke Jennings’s characters from a perspective a man wouldn’t have. Neither of the leads behave like you’d expect them to, which is best demonstrated when Villanelle applies white powder to her face and fakes an overdose just to prank her dour Russian handler. In that moment she’s almost like a five-year-old child, being silly for her daddy’s affections, rather than a lethal killer.

But there are downsides with Killing Eve. It doesn’t always make a lot of logical sense, particularly in how MI5 seem to be aware “the killer” has struck once again — when Villanelle has no clear modus operandi and, from the information we’re given, it seems a stretch you’d connect her murders as the work of one person.

Even the title makes no sense, as Villannelle doesn’t want to kill Eve, nor is she ordered to do so against her will.

Eve also makes some terrible decisions most of the time… the scripts often collapse into genre cliche… Villanelle gets herself into situations that, frankly, mark her out as a beginner, when she’s supposed to be an experienced pro… and the idea Eve and Villanelle would become infatuated with each other didn’t land for me. That sort of thing was handled infinitely better on NBC’s Hannibal, with the twisted mind-games between serial killer Dr. Lecter and FBI manhunter Will Graham.

It wasn’t clear what Villanelle sees in Eve, beyond her great hairdo.

One could accept Eve is initially drawn to the idea of a young woman doing things usually associated with men, as she’s a square who may fantasise about the dangerous and exciting life someone like Villanelle leads. But understanding why Villanelle is instantly attracted to Eve isn’t so easy, and I didn’t see any sparks between the two actresses that sold the intended undercurrent of the series touching on social taboos and sexual power plays.

I’m perhaps alone in thinking this.

Killing Eve earned positive reviews from many critics who seemed to love the Eve/Villanelle dynamic, but I think more could’ve been done to foreshadow their feelings for each other and make it feel plausible and earned. It was never at the level where I felt conflicted by anything going on, or secretly hoping Eve sleeps with Villanelle and they run away together. That would certainly have painted Eve in a horrendous light, considering a tragedy that befalls her in Episode 3, “Don’t I Know You?”

The story doesn’t dig into either character’s psychology deep enough to make their connection feel earned and valid.You just have a childish Russian assassin with a strange infatuation for a mature American woman, who happens to be part of a task force trying to arrest her, and maybe her crush has a general fascination with her in return. It’s not enough.

Comer and Oh do a solid job hiding the script’s foundational problems, I think, but that’s really just another way of saying they’re better than this.

Episode 4, “Sorry Baby”, is a perfect example of how stupid this show can get, as three assassins (including Villanelle) descend on a quaint English village for a job and do everything wrong like a bunch of rank amateurs. They park their car in a village square in broad daylight, assemble military-grade weapons in open view of passersby, and eventually end up speeding down narrow country lanes firing assault rifles out of a sunroof like they’re in a bad ’80s film.

Villanelle, allegedly one of Europe’s top assassins, even aims a gun at someone… with ONE EYE CLOSED!

Maybe the show’s budget wouldn’t stretch to getting firearms and ex-spooks involved, who could read the scripts and give feedback on what’s patently absurd or works against authenticity. Or just get someone on the set who knows a thing or two about how professional killers and MI5 agents would operate.

I’m all for TV shows having fun and playing loose with how the real world functions, but this show screams for a dose of realism it never captures.

Killing Eve is the result of weak source material being adapted by a good writer of women, but one who isn’t well-versed in the espionage genre. However, it does enough right to become an enjoyable bit of pulp trash you can binge-watch easily enough, helped enormously by a talented cast who elevate what they can — even through a cod Russian accent.

Cast & Crew

writers: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Vicky Jones, George Kay & Rob Williams.
directors: Harry Bradbeer, Jon East & Damon Thomas.
starring: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Darren Boyd, Owen McDonnell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Sean Delaney, David Haig & Kim Bodnia.