3 out of 5

Developed by: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

covers season 1

Killing Eve is an amazing movie: fantastic performances from a nervily entertaining Sandra Oh and a creepily entrancing Jodie Cormier (one of my current faves, having proven chameleonic in range); a dark and quirky adaptation of Luke Jennings’ Villanelle material; ace direction and pacing that sells the threat of potential anytime-violence by assassin Oksana – Cormier – whose very existence is denied by all but MI5 agent Eve, played by Oh.  Two or so hours of the cat and mouse Eve and Oksana begin to play – Eve being drafted into a clandestine club trying to track down “Villanelle’s” (Oksana’s codename) taskmasters, while Villanelle herself becomes fixated on Eve’s impetuous obsession – would be biting, edge-of-your-seat thrills and, thanks to Cormier breathing believable, frightening life into a cold-hearted and -souled killer, perfect fodder for plucking at our own discordant fascinations with fame and infamy and juxtaposed feelings of love and disgust; doubly perfect fodder for developer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who has shown to enjoy swimming in such emotional mire with Fleabag and Crashing.

Stretched out over the course of a season, though – and another season to come – you can feel the material straining a bit in its serialization.  Shifting Eve from MI5 to her secret Oksana-hunting club feels very convenient, and “the twelve” running Villanelle’s operations are all Bond-villain, endless-resources mysterious, with an endless stream of co-assassins to pop up to assist (and then generally by gutted by) Oksana, quickly deflating the sense of secret that should keep said group threatening.  This isn’t to say that the – essentially – capsule mini-arcs (two to three connected episodes) aren’t gripping, but when you step back to consider the Eve / Oksana inteplay as the series’ main componenet, it becomes clearer and clearer how much of a runaround we’re being given.

The immensely watchable leads, excellent production design – Eve’s and Oksana’s relative living quarters are fully ingrained aspects of their personalities – and willingness to drop into sudden brutality, which reinstates the stakes lost to the “no one knows about Villanelle / everyone knows about Villanelle” mish-mash, making Killing Eve an overall imperfect show plot-wise, but thus indirectly endears us to Oh and Cormier’s characters, making them – and not the moderately belabored twists – the reason we will return week to week for the next episode.