Killing Eve's Villanelle’s back with new clothes, new pals, and murderously good new songs

A new line-up of guest stars is here to inject a fresh lease of life into Killing Eve
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Alastair McKay17 April 2020

Can you have too much of a good thing?

Midway through series two of Killing Eve it started to look that way.

A show that had started out as a comic-book inversion of James Bond seemed to have overstretched its dramatic elastic. The push-pull of the fantasy relationship between sad MI5 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) — married to a moustache, hoping for more — and psychopathic sex kitten Villanelle (Jodie Comer) had reached a cheese-dream climax, leaving one of them mortified, if not exactly dead.

What to do? Start again, ignoring mortal reason. Comic-book characters die tentatively, until they get a better offer. Could a romantic obsession between opposites survive a murder attempt?

Harriet Walter stars as Villanelle's former mentor
Sid Gentle Films/BBC

Of course, because this fantasy employs the rulebook of a recurring dream. It repeats, with new lipstick. The dream dreams the dreamer, the song remains the same.

Of course, out of respect for viewers employing analogue logic, a bit of reconstruction is needed to get the pieces back on the board. You might — slight spoiler — need a sacrificial man to kick-start the absurdity. Some new guest stars to brighten the room. A fresh wardrobe for Villanelle because, increasingly, the whole show is a runway, when it’s not being a closet. Locations, locations, locations, because glamour excuses all manner of ugly behaviour, and Villanelle’s dead-eyed shrug employs the sort of psychopathic apathy that is normally reserved for Instagram influencers impersonating exhausted supermodels.

So, Villanelle is getting married (to a woman, obvs). Eve is shopping for noodles. Villanelle is wearing black, Eve has a long face. You can see where this is going.

The music, as ever on this extremely Shazam-able show, is great: She’s My Witch by Fireflies for Eve’s sad shlep round the Chinese supermarket, Tiene La Tarara by Marisol for the custard pie fight at the nuptials.

It’s hard to think of a TV drama in which the tunes are so central, and so well-chosen, managing to be both obscure and familiar, and lending an ambience of pop knowingness to the dramatic inevitabilities. Killing Eve is a pop opera, and while it’s tempting to mention David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino in this context, it may be more accurate to draw a line between the films of Kenneth Anger and the blurred imagination of Serge Gainsbourg. It’s a matter of style and cigarettes.

Television shows in 2020

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Then there is the internationalism. It’s universal. Everybody is a stereotype. Fiona Shaw steals every scene as the MI5 boss with a penchant for power blouses and dismissive English manners, but she now has to deal with Steve Pemberton’s Paul, who sneers from behind comedy glasses.

Kim Bodnia has a Russian mobster’s taste in clothes and a laugh like a jackal choking on a pickled beetroot. Best of all, here comes Harriet Walter as Dasha, the leopardskin-clad Soviet gymnast who schooled Villanelle in the art of cold-hearted murder, and still knows how to intimidate, with a Russian accent like a meerkat snorting vodka.

“She’s back,” Carolyn tells Eve, “and she’s working.”

Killing Eve airs Sunday on BBC One at 9.15pm; new episodes are available to stream on BBC iPlayer on Mondays

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