Killing Eve
Sid Gentle Films
Killing Eve is feminist, ethnically diverse, and LGBTQIA friendly. It features incredible clothes. It also, in the very first episode, includes the extremely violent and horrifying use of a hairpin. It is simultaneously glamorous (those clothes!) and gritty (Russian prison! Dour cubicles!). I watched six of the eight episodes in a single day (I watched the other two the day before). The series killed off my productivity with even more efficiency than it killed off its cast.
The premise is as follows. Sandra Oh plays Eve, a bored MI5 officer who is stuck at a desk. Eve has a fascination with female assassins and believes that several unsolved killings may be the work of a single woman. She is recruited by MI6 to track the hypothetical assassin down.
Is Eve right? Is there a prolific and increasingly messy female assassin running around? Of course there is. The story flips back and forth between Eve and the assassin, Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer. Villanelle is like a very deadly toddler. She likes kills that allow her to stare into the victim’s eyes as he or she dies. When her handler forbids her from taking on a job, she pouts, “But this one has asthma! You know I like the breathy ones!”
I confess that I fast-forwarded through some of the kills. The show includes blood, some sadistic murders, and a photo of animal abuse. Refreshingly, there’s no rape and child abuse is referenced only in the most vague of terms (we assume that Villanelle’s childhood was traumatic but we never know much about it).
A lot of people have been writing about what makes Killing Eve different from other spy shows. The New Yorker writes about the many ways that the show keeps viewers “off balance” by subverting the expected tropes of spy stories. Autostraddle and The Verge have both written about the queerness of the show, something that is embedded in both the show’s text and subtext. Villanelle rarely uses sexual seduction, the glamour is undercut with grit, and the tension between Eve and Villanelle turns into a sort of twisted and wonderful love story.
I was drawn to the show because of the acting – specifically, the way actors pull line readings out of nowhere. Lines like “Whaaat?” and “Stay nourished. Get some chops,” can’t possibly have looked as redolent with menace, meaning, and humor on the page as they did when spoken by Comer and Fiona Shaw, respectively (Shaw plays Eve’s unflappable new boss). Scenes switch from horror to action to drama to deadpan humor within seconds without ever missing a beat or feeling jarring. Oh and Comer are amazing but so is the supporting cast.
The show is smart, and it’s funny, and it’s also scary as hell. There were scenes that I KNEW were going to happen. They were in the promo photos! You couldn’t miss them! But when they really did happen, I was petrified. Villanelle is so unpredictable that even though you can guess that some things WON’T happen, you can’t guess what WILL happen. I yelled at the screen a lot. I’m certain my advice was helpful.
I clocked it, and the time that elapsed between me liking the show and being totally obsessed with it was 5 minutes and 19 seconds (It involved Eve saying “Cool!” at an inappropriate moment). The show has been out for a while, but I like to wait until a season is over before I decide whether or not I like it (I did). It will be streaming on BBC America until June 26. I bought it from iTunes but if you are a patient soul you can wait until later this year and watch it on Hulu.
But don’t wait. Watch it now. The only caveat I have about this show is that due to violent content it might not be for everyone.
I’m going to be waiting for Hulu, so I want to slip in here before comments possibly get spoilery and just say “thank you for the introduction.”
Also, LOL: I yelled at the screen a lot. I’m certain my advice was helpful.
Completely agree. It was fabulous. I binged watched it with my husband over 2 days. Thoroughly recommend it. There’s supposed to be a second season and I can’t wait.
This show is so great. I fell hard after the first scene in the sweetshop and Jody Comer’s wicked little grin. The actors, clothes and music are all fantastic. I’d heard of the shows creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge before this but never checked out her work. After this, and her performance in Solo, I am officially a fangirl and super excited for season two.
I love spy/assassin stories, so I was really excited to watch the show, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as you guys did.
Maybe I was expecting more of a straight thriller-type story, but I found all the tonal shifts jarring. I feel like we got a lot of humor just for the sake of being funny, and to show Villanelle being darkly adorable, and it just didn’t mesh that well for me. The show seemed like more of a showcase for the actors than anything else, with other things just thrown in along the way (like the evil group).
Plus, there were a lot of unanswered questions at the end of the season. I wanted some more info about certain things, like what Fiona Shaw’s character was up to. I’ll watch season 2, but overall, I was a bit disappointed with season 1.
I’m dying to see this. Jodie Comer is a very good actress – she made me literally hate her in Doctor Foster. I wanted to punch the screen whenever she was on it, almost as much as the husband did. Almost. Watch Doctor Foster. Just do it.
Also, watch Fleabag, Waller-Bridge’s previous show which she wrote and starred in. It’s really fantastic.
I loved this SO MUCH! I hope there’ll be another season; I can’t wait.
Chiming in to say that I love the series (on episode 6!), but don’t bother with the novellas it’s based on. I checked out Codename Villanelle (the first 4 collected novellas) by Luke Jennings from my library with high hopes, but it’s very, very different. The writing is very male-gazey and expositiony, Villanelle is much more sexual and boringly manipulative with it, and the wonderful obsessive fascination Eve and V have for each other isn’t there at all. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the rest of the cast and crew took a somewhat mediocre spy/assassin thriller and made something exceptional out of it.
I binged it in two days as well and enjoyed it thoroughly. There were a couple things that give me pause, but nothing that makes me not recommend it. Spoilers though, and I don’t know how to hide them, so stop please if you haven’t watched it all!
I’m side eyeing the way they brought out Bill’s feminine side right before fridging him. It’s lazy and obvious even without the cozy girl talk time to make him extra adorable. Did we have to establish that only people who sleep with men get sacrificed to provide motivation for protagonists? I’m also not sure why Carolyn had to be all giggly all the sudden in Russia. I’m not saying her character is based entirely on the plot needs of any given episode, but I’m concerned it might be. Just me?
Ugh I tried to at least leave a big space before the spoilers but it’s all smooshed together. Sorry!!!
I’m dying to see this! I loved Jodie Cramer in Doctor Foster (the only one of the three I didn’t hate, go figure) and Sandra O is fabulous. I’m waiting for it to go up on Hulu but ughhh, I want to watch it now!
Sandra Oh*
I ended up loving the show, though it took me a few episodes, but I keep seeing people saying how LGBTQIA friendly it is and I’m not sure that I agree with that. Specifically:
SPOILERS
The fact that pretty much the second they revealed Bill was queer he was violently murdered, and that the main queer character, Villanelle, is a fucking psychopath. I mean, she’s fun to watch, but she’s also a psychopath. And maybe Eve is queer? Or maybe she’s just questioning or just obsessed with this person? I’m not really sure at this point. But while it may be a subversion of the expected tropes to fridge a white man instead of a woman, or to have an unapologetically queer villain who’s actually textually queer instead of just alluded to that way, I don’t know where the “friendly” or “positive” comes into play. Just my opinion, of course, but I think while it’s a fun show there were still some really, really problematic things about it and I’m a bit afraid it’s going to get Tumblerized into “hey, this violent assassin who does horrible things without batting an eye is our new gay hero cause she’s so cute and wears frilly dresses and kisses girls!”
ok that rant went a bit longer than I anticipated sorry.
I loved this show so much. I loved that it was intense and scary and funny the next. I loved how realistic the characters were, especially Sandra Oh.
I loved this show, and the showrunner, Pheobe Waller-Bridge is amazing. Check out Fleabag, if you haven’t seen it, it contains my favorite vagina joke of all time! One of the things I loved about Killing Eve was that Waller-Bridge gender swapped a bunch of the characters, who were played by men in the novellas. An article quoted her as saying someone questioned there being too many women characters, and her response was that there is no such thing, so long as it’s written well. And it is! A testament to how much I liked this show is that I *didn’t* wait until the season was over to binge it. If i wait a week in between episodes, you know I got it bad. It’s already renewed for Season 2, which I am thrilled about.
SPOILERS:
I am still so very bitter about Bill though. Grrrrr
I loved this show so much. I wish I had been able to wait til I could binge it, like some of you, dear readers. Watching it on the regular left me with so many questions:
What’s Villanelle gonna wear THIS week? Who’s next to underestimate a badass lady? WHEN’S CAROLYN’S HAT GETTING ITS SPINOFF ALREADY?!?!?
I started it this morning while putting away epic amounts of laundry (told the kids to leave the room and they were banned from helping b/c I was watching grown up tv). AWESOME. I’m glad you all pointed me to it. But mad at myself for reading the spoilers, although I suspected one of the sidekicks was in for it. I’m really into the music – is there a playlist somewhere?
Apparently Killing Eve will premiere on Bravo in Canada on Sunday, July 22, at 9 pm Eastern. I can’t wait 😀