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

READ MORE: FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE

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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.

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

Killing Eve series three acquired by the BBC

Series three of Killing Eve has been snapped up by the BBC.

Series one made the headlines and was a global hit, series two is doing the business and will soon be winging its way to our shores, and now we’re hearing news that series three has been snapped up by the BBC.

This shouldn’t be astonishing news to anyone, but BBC America is an affiliate of the BBC and contracts still need to be signed.

We brought you news that the series had been renewed for a third run earlier in the week (read that story here), but it’s good news the series will be back.

In the meantime, we’re waiting for the transmission date for series two. Here’s the trailer for that:

Killing Eve renewed for a third series

With series two currently playing out on BBC America in the US, news reaches us that Killing Eve has been commissioned for a third series.

The award-winning cat-and-mouse thriller series, starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, is a fan favourite and aired in the UK on BBC One.

The third series will feature the two leads, and will be written by a new writer.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

In keeping with its new tradition of handing off the showrunner reins to a new female writing voice, British writer Suzanne Heathcote (Fear the Walking Dead) will take over for Emerald Fennell, who in turn took over for creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

There’s no news on when series two will air in the UK.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE CLICK HERE

Killing Eve: New trailer released by BBC America

As we all know by now, series two of Killing Eve will be incoming this year – 7th April in the US on BBC America and later on in the UK – and by now the PR machine is cranking into full motion.

Yesterday BBC America released a new, full trailer, which seems to focus on Eve’s relationship with Villanelle – ie why are they so fascinated with one another?

Look out for Nina Sosanya and Julian Barratt joining the cast in series two.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE CLICK HERE

BBC America releases series two trailer for Killing Eve

Killing Eve became a huge global success last year, thanks to airing on both BBC America and BBC One. It helped that there was a terrific script by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and two outstanding central performances from Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh.

We knew that that series two was going to drop in the US on 7th April, and now the PR machine has begun to whirr into action. Here’s the first trailer:

We’re told that Nina Sosanya and Julian Barratt are joining the cast for series two, but for now this looks as though it’ll carry on as series one left off – lots of obsession, psycho-sexual interplay and pan-global storylines.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE CLICK HERE

Killing Eve series two to air in the US in April

Killing Eve – which came in at number 10 in our Best Crime Dramas Of 2018 – is good to go for its second series, and news has reached us that BBC America, its home in the US, will broadcast it from April.

Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer return as the two main players – an MI6 operative, and psychopath assassin Villanelle – and series two begins just after the end of the final episode of series one. Villanelle has disappeared, and Eve is left reeling, having no idea if the woman she stabbed is alive or dead. With both of them in deep trouble, Eve has to find Villanelle before someone else does… but unfortunately, she’s not the only person looking for her.

American readers should look out for it from 7th April. British viewers will likely get it again on BBC One, but it’s a case of when – series one had a lengthy gap, but this time? It was such a huge success so it might be sooner.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE CLICK HERE

Killing Eve releases first-look images from series two

There’s no doubt about it, Killing Eve has really captured the imagination of the global audience ever since it was first shown on BBC America last year and then, later on in 2018, on BBC One in the UK.

The tale of psychopathic hitwoman, Villanelle (Jodie Comer), and British intelligence offer Eve (Sandra Oh), they formed a dynamic, very watchable cat-and-mouse team. Thrown in a story and script written by the superb Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and it was no wonder it became a huge global hit.

With filming now more or less completed on series two, some first-look images have emerged:

It looks like more of the same: Eve in pensive, what-the-hell-is-happening mode, and Villanelle, in trouble.

We’re expecting this to hit in the spring, and we’re hoping there won’t be such a long wait between the US transmission and UK transmission this time around.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF KILLING EVE CLICK HERE