BOXSET REVIEW: KILLING EVE (Series 3)

“I was trained to look devastating.”

BBC confirms transmission date for series three of Killing Eve, acquires series four

A double-whammy of good news for Killing Eve fans.

The BBC has not only confirmed the transmission date for series three, but it has also revealed that it has acquired series four of the award-winning cat-and-mouse thriller.

The third series continues the compelling cat and mouse story of two women with brutal pasts now trying desperately to live their lives without the other. For Villanelle (Jodie Comer), the assassin without a job, Eve (Sandra Oh) is dead. As for Eve, the ex-MI6 operative is hiding in plain sight, hoping that Villanelle will never find her. All seems fine until a shocking death sets them on a collision course yet again. The journey back to each other will cost both of them friends, family, and allegiances. And perhaps a share of their souls.

New cast additions include Dame Harriet Walter, Danny Sapani, Gemma Whelan, Camille Cottin, Steve Pemberton, Raj Bajaj, Turlough Convery, Pedja Bjelac and Evgenia Dodina.

Killing Eve (series 3): Sunday 19th April (starting on iPlayer Monday 13th April), 9pm, BBC One

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BBC America drops series three Killing Eve teaser and transmission date

Killing Eve is a bona fide global phenomenon, and with series three on its way, the TV adaptation of Luke Jennings’ novels continues apace this year.

The show’s US home – BBC America – has dropped a new, 15-second, Valentine’s Day-themed teaser for the new third series and has revealed its transmission date.

Deadline says: “The third season continues the story of two women with brutal pasts, addicted to each other but now trying desperately to live their lives without their drug of choice. For Villanelle (Jodie Comer), the assassin without a job, Eve (Sandra Oh) is dead. For Eve, the ex-MI6 operative hiding in plain sight, Villanelle will never find her. All seems fine until a shocking and personal death sets them on a collision course yet again. The journey back to each other will cost both of them friends, family, and allegiances…and perhaps a share of their souls.”

It also reports that Suzanne Heathcote is this series’ lead writer and the cast includes Harriet Walter, Danny Sapani, Gemma Whelan, Camille Cottin, Steve Pemberton, Raj Bajaj, Turlough Convery, Pedja Bjelac and Evgenia Dodina.

The channel also revealed that the series is set to drop on 26th April.

Series three of Killing Eve begins production; Harriet Walter joins cast

The award-winning, smash-hit thriller Killing Eve has begun production on its third series and has welcomed new cast members as well as lead writer.

Dame Harriet Walter and Danny Sapani are now onboard for the third series. Killing Eve, produced by Sid Gentle Films Ltd, left off with an explosive cliffhanger at the end of series two, as Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) seemingly betrayed Eve (Sandra Oh) before Villanelle (Jodie Comer) shot Eve, leaving her for dead in Rome.

For series three, British writer Suzanne Heathcote will come on board to serve as lead writer and executive producer, continuing the tradition of passing the baton to a new female writing voice.

More news as we get it.

READ MORE: OUR SERIES ONE AND TWO REVIEWS

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E8/8)

So Eve and Villanelle are in Rome, trying to figure out Bond villain Peel’s master plan – Villanelle’s behaving herself and everything is going tickety-boo. What could possible go wrong?

Apart from the fact that Villanelle has killed Nico’s girlfriend Gemma, and locked him in a storage container, that is.

Well, let’s think about how we imagine this episode playing out. Villanelle’s going to find an excuse to kill Peel – obviously – everyone’s going to decamp back home in a panic, and then Nico’s going to turn up in search of revenge. Eve is going to be torn between loyalty to Nico and her obsession for Villanelle (no concern for poor Gemma, we imagine), and the series will end with Villanelle on the run, this time with Nico in hot pursuit.

Well, we were half right. Villanelle does indeed find an excuse to kill Peel – he’s a serial killer who likes to murder his girlfriends and video the action. After finding the evidence on a hard drive, presumably in a folder marked Evidence of All My Terrible Crimes, Villanelle uses the safe word and calls in Eve for extraction. But she has her own problems – after her Mrs Robinson-like affair with Hugo, she leaves him bleeding to death after being shot by a hitman from The Twelve, and stumbles unarmed into Peel’s lair.

Peel realises that Villanelle is a plant, but still expects her to kill Eve – why would he assume she was a cold-blooded killer?  Anyway, he’s duly surprised when she slits his throat instead.

Leaving aside the question of why you would kill someone with Peel’s powerful data-mining weapon rather than extorting the secret out of him first, we knew all along that this was exactly the point of the mission – to have Peel dead but to retain plausible deniability – but Eve is completely shocked when Carolyn explains this to her. Eve really is a very, very bad intelligence agent, not realising the lay of the land even though Kenny had warned her that her mission was a phony.

In a confrontation with Raymond, Villanelle manipulates Eve into killing him with an axe – why would he turn up so inadequately armed when he knows Villanelle can kill someone with a hatpin? Anyway, Konstantin has washed his hands of Villanelle, so the two girls have to go on the run. Villanelle obviously has a Thelma & Louise vision of the two going off on some self-destructive final journey – or possible settling in a cabin in Alaska – but seems genuinely distraught and amazed when Eve doesn’t go for it. In fact, disappointed and spurned, she shoots Eve in the back.

So we’re back to where we started this season, with one of the main protagonists seriously wounded – but we know that Eve isn’t going to die, because a) series 3 has already been commissioned, and b) the popgun Villanelle shot her with is hardly adequate to kill anyone from that range. Eve will be up and grouching before tea-time.

So, the ultimate confrontation we imagined – an enraged Nico forcing Eve to choose between himself and Villanelle – is postponed until the next series. Eve has found her strength, and now says she isn’t afraid of anything – Villanelle has presumably lost her faith in Eve, and any prospect they had of a life together. Poor old Hugo and Gemma end up the innocent victims of the bad romance between Villanelle and Eve.

So, series two, classic or clunker? Well, it certainly didn’t have the novelty or shock value of series one, but that was perhaps inevitable with familiarity; somewhere, though, it also seems to have ditched a lot of the trademark Phoebe Waller-Bridge humour, and a great deal of the fashion style.

Maybe series three, to be written by Suzanne Heathcote (Fear the Walking Dead) will go off in new directions – certainly there are still big questions to answer, such as exactly how Konstantin and Carolyn are connected to The Twelve.

As to the relationship between Eve and Villanelle – well, they’re on equal footing now, both having tried unconvincingly to kill the other, so it could go either way. While that intriguing possibility still exists, we guess Killing Eve will still have options to explore.

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE THREE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FOUR REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FIVE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE SIX REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE SEVEN REVIEW

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E7/8)

Villanelle’s amusing herself with a couple of lovers, Eve’s increasingly isolated from her colleagues and husband, and Peel’s evil plans are still obscure – but with the Rome meeting coming up, will Eve’s plans bear fruit, or come to dust?

We’ve found out a lot more about Villanelle’s twisted psychology since her AA meetings, but can we believe her when she tells Eve that she feels things only when she’s with her? Or is this another mind game?

Villanelle’s picked up a couple of party girls for a sexfest, or was it just to annoy Eve? Anyway, she’s in with Aaron Peel, and after a flirty dinner with him, gets an invite to his Rome conference. Her instructions are to find out what Peel’s weapon is and who he’s selling to, and definitely not to kill anyone. Should be easy.

We’re uncomfortable with the fact that Eve seems so fixated with Villanelle that she overlooks the fact that she murdered Bill – is this likely? Moreover, Villannelle has not forgotten Nico, who she tracks down to his storage unit, where the ripe Gemma gets in the way. What are Villanelle’s intentions? Nothing good, surely.

Eve has another meeting with psychologist Martin to discuss Villanelle, but just ends up revealing her own lack of perspective.

Carolyn is unsure of Eve’s ability to manage Villanelle in Rome, and Kenny warns her that the operation is compromised, but Villanelle proves to be a surprisingly good spy, indulging Peel in his pervy psycho games and managing to avoid killing anyone.

Eve, though, becomes increasingly unhinged, watching Villanelle as obsessively as Peel does, and predictably sleeping with the slimy Hugo (as much to entertain Villanelle as anything). Villanelle though emerges unsullied, as Peel seems to have no interest in sleeping with anyone.

The predatory side of Eve’s personality has certainly developed under Villanelle’s influence, as she’s used both Nicro and Hugo for her own gratificiation.

Peel’s data mining weapon proves to be everything he promised his buyers, so the mission is a success up to this point; what no-one knows is that Nico and Gemma are still imprisoned in the lock-up, Gemma dead and Nico unconscious.

The timeline here is a bit confusing – has Nico been unconscious all the time Eve is in Rome? We’re also bemused that Peel’s elaborate observation system doesn’t seem to extend to audio as well as video.

Nonetheless, things have moved along to the extent that we can expect a slam-bang finale next week, with Nico out for revenge, and Eve presumably still determined to protect Villanelle against all comers.

Lovely outdoor and indoor sets in Rome are an added bonus in this episode – presumably next week we’re back to rainswept London, but then where? Can the pairing of Eve and Villanelle survive another confrontation?

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE THREE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FOUR REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FIVE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE SIX REVIEW

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E6/8)

Something about the way in which Villanelle has been exciting Eve’s libido seems to have rubbed off on Nico, as the maths teacher comes in out of the rain after his encounter with the psycho in Oxford and treats the submissive Eve to a sound seeing-too.

 

But the aphrodisiac effect doesn’t last, and Nico ends up leaving Eve and moving in with the fecund Gemma, while Villanelle breaks into Eve’s house and interferes with her knick-knacks.  

 

Carolyn has been convinced by killer Jin’s revelation about her employer, and demonstrates to Eve what a slimeball Aaron Peel really is; but it’s Eve’s idea to embed Villanelle in Peel’s party when he travels to Rome to do a deal for his dodgy data.

 

Villanelle jumps at the chance to go undercover, assuming the identity of a whiney American addict, a role which reveals rather more about the emptiness at the heart of her psycho personality than she might have liked. But at least it gives her the chance to kill again, bumping off an obstructive bodyguard as she worms her way into the affections of Peel’s sister.

 

After a stunningly awkward dinner with the brother-and-sister nut-jobs, and an abortive search of the house (as if Peel would leave a folder lying around labelled ‘My Secret Plans and How to Foil Them’), Villanelle finds herself alone and frustrated in London, and stalks a couple of party girls – but with violence or sex in mind?

 

Again, something of a filler episode as we work up to the shenanigans of a trip to Rome, but valuable in giving us a bit more insight into the way Villanelle’s mind works, and how Eve is becoming the manipulated rather than the manipulator.

 

The confrontation between Eve and Gemma though, nominally the dramatic centre of the episode, falls a bit flat for us because we’ve never been able to warn to Nico – Eve might well be better off without him, and the odd domination session aside, we can’t see why a split with the porn moustache guy would be much of a loss. Ah, but this is surely a dramatic tool to drive a confrontation between Eve and Villanelle, with Nico the action hero primed to jump in and save her – once he’s done the marking and prepared the week’s lesson plans.

 

No, Eve would definitely be better off with a more dynamic partner –and with her working relationship with Villanelle sliding over into a personal one, we think she’s going to get one. Maybe, next week, in Rome, the budding romance will finally bloom.

 

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE THREE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FOUR REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FIVE REVIEW

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E5/8)

Villanelle is bored, The Ghost is enigmatic, Eve is frustrated – how are the three going to collide, now that we’re past the mid-point of this gallingly inconsistent season?

Unlike Villanelle, who loves to be the centre of attention, rival assassin Jin, The Ghost, is impassive and unresponsive – she taunts Eve with a few sassy remarks, but gives no real information. Eve’s breakthrough comes when she realises that even Jin is frightened of Villanelle, the Dalgyal Gwishin, the Egg Ghost, the Demon with No Face, and she hatches a barmy plot to recruit Villanelle to break Jin.

We have three problems with this. First, if it was so easy to contact Villanelle by putting out a hit on someone, why not do it before? Second, that’s not how contract killing works – the client doesn’t know who the killer is, or the other way around, so this is an unrealistic plot device. Third, this moves Villanelle further into Hannibal territory – firstly, acting as a sort of consultant psychopath, and secondly, as she breaks Jin merely by whispering to her in a shipping container, becoming a nightmare figure operating in the recesses of other malefactors’ minds.

It’s also unconvincing that Jin vouchsafes the information that her employer on the Peel hit was the victim’s son – again, the hitter shouldn’t know the employer’s identity, precisely to prevent this sort of information coming out.

Villanelle has been bored, taking up out-staring human statues as a hobby, not even entertained by punching a victim to death in a carwash (and emerging remarkably unbloodied), but she does regain her mojo when she comes to Eve’s house to cut a deal.

Villanelle is so excited that she dresses up in a lacy black number (and it’s a sight to see her tripping around the Forest of Dean in it) – Eve’s so turned on by meeting Villanelle again that she drags limp noodle Nico upstairs for a quickie (an unsubtlety we think Phoebe Waller-Bridge might have avoided).

Eve herself is tremulously wondering whether she does in fact have it in her to kill, perhaps by pushing someone under a train – certainly she’s developed a streak of ruthlessness which leads her to falling out with Kenny, and allows her to expose Jin to Villanelle (Jin calls Eve a “monster” for doing it). When Carolyn’s pet psychologist comes in to lecture the team about psychopaths, he’s actually assessing Eve for psychotic tendencies.

Yet when she has Villanelle in her clutches – and let’s not forget that Villanelle murdered Bill and many others – Eve simply lets her go. If she was doing her job, Villanelle would by now be strapped to a trolley, wearing a bite mask, and locked in a big plastic cage.

Instead, she’s wandering around Oxford, dressed as something out of Brideshead Revisited and confronting a baffled Nico.

While we think the writers have lost their way in this implausible episode, they’re obviously working up to a confrontation between Eve, Villanelle and Nico – so will the limp noodle finally become aroused enough to fight to save his marriage from the toxic influence of the psychopathic Villanelle?

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE THREE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE FOUR REVIEW

 

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E4/8)

With some hints of the quirky humour and transgressive plotting of series one starting to return to what has been a lacklustre second series, a lot hangs on this episode – Villanelle is back in the killing business, and Eve is hot on her trail. But there are stumbling blocks along the way, not least the elusive assassin The Ghost.

It’s getting harder and harder for Killing Eve to produce anything surprising – so when we discover that the quirky Carolyn has an equally quirky boss to report to, it hardly rocks our world. That it’s Helen, played by Zoe Wanamaker, wearing a cardigan, munching Pringles, and coming out with a lot of colourful sexual invective, hardly adds to the novelty value – okay, we get it, you want to find work for a lot of ageing actresses.

We see Carolyn leaving Vauxhall Cross (the MI6 headquarters on Albert Embankment, famously destroyed in Bond movie Skyfall) and heading back to her own scabby office, where Eve has been working all weekend on identifying The Ghost (Hugo asks whether she has Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box, a reference to David Fincher movie 7even).

Eve has figured out that all the suspicious deaths around the Peel dynasty require some medical knowledge; maybe The Ghost is a rogue doctor or nurse? A visit to arrogant Aaron Peel reveals nothing – but why are Eve and Jess so submissive when he dismisses their concerns? Nonetheless the hunch pans out – when another body is found, killed in an almost merciful manner, Hugo’s research leads to a suspect. Eve confronts her on a school playground and she surrenders – next week, then, we should get her backstory.

Villanelle, meanwhile, is kicking around Amsterdam, goading Konstantin, getting stoned, picking fights in bars and missing Eve. She only perks up when a hit-job offers the opportunity for some fun. She’s inspired by a particularly brutal painting in the Rijksmuseum, The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers, attributed to Jan de Baen, c. 1672-1675. This shows the mutilated corpses of two politicians who picked the wrong side in the accession of William of Orange; eviscerated, castrated and hanged upside-down, they hold a particularly gory place in Dutch history.

Villanelle, though, loves the example, and slaughters her next victim by displaying him inverted in a window in the red light district, and disembowelling him in front of his wife (who had presumably paid for the job).

What worried us about this routine is that it’s all too similar to psycho gore-fest Hannibal, which was one ritualistic, artistic slaughter after another – Villanelle isn’t particularly culturally attuned (apart from her liking for designer couture and massive ear-rings), so we don’t warn to this direction she’s going in. Maybe she just does it because it will attract Eve’s attention – certainly she’s disappointed when the pregnant Jess turn up to investigate instead.

As both Eve and Villanelle stare into a mirrors, perhaps neither liking what they see, we do get a spark of the deeply psychotic relish of Series One – maybe co-writer of this week’s episode DC Moore (Not Safe For Work) has brought a refreshing new voice. But we’re still wondering where all this is going – another encounter between Eve and Villanelle is inevitable but seems distant. After Eve’s flirty lunchbreak with slimy Hugo, we think a triangle involving drippy Niko and pining colleague Gemma may well develop – if Villanelle doesn’t chop a bloody swathe through London first.

PS – rather than Desperate Times, we’d have titled this episode after Villanelle’s complaint in the museum, that everything was just paintings of ‘Grapes or Naked Women’. Or her complaint to Konstantin about her targets – ‘Scorned Wives and Scumbags’. They can have those two for free.

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE THREE REVIEW

REVIEW: Killing Eve (S2 E3/8)

The problem with series two of Killing Eve was always going to be that there were only two ways it could go: option one, the same thing all over again, attempting to repeat the success of season one by imitation; or option two, something different, taking the risk of losing the original spark in the search for novelty. Our money was on option one, and guess what, that particular fleabag (see what we did there?) has passed the winning post first.

Because, utterly predictably, the old gang from season one has been reunited with the return of Villanelle’s original handler, Konstantin (Kim Bodnia). Anyone who didn’t see this coming needs a refresher course in TV clichés; first, you don’t break up a winning line-up of star power, and second, you don’t assume a character is dead unless you actually see them dismembered. Crucially, if you only hear reports of a character’s death off-stage – well, they ain’t dead.

So it was with weary predictability that we welcomed back Konstantin (well, Kim Bodnia is a great asset to the series, but the freshness of the writing is undermined by such an obvious twist).

Konstantin survived being shot in the tea-room (always painful) by Villanelle, and Carolyn now has him stashed away, trading information for the safety of his family (who think he is dead). Eve greets his resurrection with weary acceptance, but is wrong-footed when he warns her to forget Villanelle – he mixes his metaphors a bit when he describes her as a hungry caterpillar. She’s actually more like the chestburster from Alien.

Villanelle, consigned by new handler Raymond to a disgustingly sleazy hotel (with louche concierge Larry played by old stager Nickolas Grace) is back to her old ways, flamboyantly dispatching a financier by trapping his tie in a lift (could this work? We must try it some time). But what of her rival operative, The Ghost? Raymond taunts Villanelle about her success – but it appears that she doesn’t work for The Twelve, so who?

Eve tries to cosy up to Niko by making him what looks like the most disgusting breakfast ever, but Villanelle has other ideas, plotting sexual shenanigans to get him in hot water in school, with the unwitting aid of besotted colleague Gemma (Emma Pierson).

Gemma, meanwhile, who is implausibly single, is easily manipulated into causing a rift – but why is Raymond, who is watching Villanelle closely, allowing her to indulge in this peccadillo?

Eve, figuring she needs some leverage, persuades Kenny to find her the location of Konstantin’s family – information she knows Konstantin will exchange for Villanelle’s location. But Konstantin beats her to it, receiving a surprisingly tender reception from Villanelle, though the power games between the two are as twisted as ever.

By the time Eve and her SWAT team turn up, Konstantin has persuaded Villanelle to go freelance, with him as her partner – Eve is distraught at missing her by inches, and Carolyn is hurt by Konstantin’s betrayal.  Even Eve begins to question her own motivation, until she finds that Villanelle’s parting gift of lipstick contains a deadly surprise.

Twisty, psychologically complex and pretty much devoid of gore, this episode felt like the series was getting into its stride again, though maybe that was just because Kim Bodnia was back, and Villanelle got into some tasteful outfits again (we’ll forget the hippy ensemble with the pasta jewellery).

But we’re still no nearer finding out anything about The Ghost, and until we engage fully with that mysterious character, we aren’t getting much of a sense of direction. But we can already predict what’s going to happen in series three; Villanelle will be recruited by MI6, and will be tasked with hunting down other killers, with Eve as her boss. We’ll put money on that, and where Killing Eve is concerned, our betting average is pretty good.

Chris Jenkins

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW

READ MORE: OUR EPISODE TWO REVIEW