Weekend's best TV: Killing Eve, A Discovery of Witches and Classic Albums

On a mission: left, Ania Marson with Sandra Oh as Eve
Sid Gentle Films/Robert Viglasky
Alastair McKay14 September 2018

Do you Shazam? Shazam, in case you don’t, is an app that identifies pieces of music. I was Shazaming a lot during Killing Eve because the music is extraordinary.

That scene in the Berlin techno club when something terrible happens, and it seems both surprising and completely predictable? That’s a tune called Bill, by Unloved.

That bit in Tuscany, where there’s a flurry of sudden brutality, as stylised as it is shocking? That’s a tune by Pshycotic Beats (they can’t spell) called Killer Shangri-Lah.

It’s an electronic torch song, in which the chorus is “I had to kill you”. It’s a bit like the Shangri-Las, but more knowing than that — a pastiche of a pastiche. And listen, in Paris there’s Roller Girl by Anna Karina, which is all revved-up sexy rock ’n’ roll, in French.

So, yes, Killing Eve is the best-sounding television drama since Twin Peaks because it knows what pop is, and it knows how to use it. This is not the thing you get in more mainstream American dramas where the emotions of a pop song are press-ganged into acting as shorthand for emotional trauma.

As drama, Killing Eve is so pop that it’s almost a cartoon, with comic-book manners and a sense of humour that is rarely subdued, even during the scenes of exotic murder, of which there are a few.

Of course, Killing Eve isn’t American at all, even though it has achieved cult success on BBC America. It’s Phoebe (Fleabag) Waller-Bridge’s adaptation of Luke Jennings’s Villanelle stories. Generically it’s a spy thriller, and while the overarching sensibility of the show is refreshingly female, the self-mockery of James Bond is built in.

There are two heroines. Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) is an MI5 agent who goes off-book to track down a mysterious female assassin, Villanelle (Jodie Comer), who is as cute as she is deadly. To start with, Villanelle is a blank. “Who are you?” asks one of her victims, early in episode two. “Why are you doing this to me?” To which she answers: “Huge question” and “I have absolutely no idea”. For her part, Eve knows a bit about clinical psychology and is “just a fan” of female assassins.

Leads: Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh star
Sid Gentle Films/Jason Bell

Similarities to Fleabag? Well, mostly that’s a question of perspective. Clothes are important, a tampon is used as a prop in the build-up to a murder, there’s a lot of talk about eating, some armpit shaving; the women are interesting and contradictory. Fiona Shaw steals episode one as Eve’s straight-faced boss. “I once saw a rat drink from a can of Coke there,” she says, as she shows

Eve into a secret office in a downmarket corner of London. “Both hands. Extraordinary.”

Dramatically, it’s hard to think of parallels. The female assassin was done by Luc Besson in Nikita, and a two-second Google will deliver Vogue’s top nine female assassins.

Killing Eve goes beyond the stupid glamour of killing because it’s really about the polar fascination between Eve and Villanelle. Eve is a real woman, forever losing her luggage. Villanelle is the stuff of fantasy fiction. And yet she hides inside a suitcase, commits murder by perfume, while remaining as fascinatingly blank as Eve is flawed and empathetic.

Pick of the day

A Discovery of Witches - Sky One, 9pm

Downton Abbey’s Matthew Goode (who played Henry Talbot and also appeared as the handsome state prosecutor in The Good Wife) stars in this modern vampire tale adapted from Deborah Harkness’s All Souls trilogy.

Actually, it’s not just vampires who are hiding in plain sight, there are daemons and witches too, though the setting is contemporary. Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer) is a historian who has been trying to play down her witchy tendencies by living normally. Things change when she visits the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and comes across a magical manuscript that catapults her back into her hidden life.

Duo: Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer
Sky

Matthew Clairmont (Goode) is just one of the people who has been searching for the manuscript, and news of its appearance puts Diana’s life in danger.

Interspecies relationships are forbidden, and the growing relationship between the two takes place against a backdrop in which the fragile peace between the various witches and daemons is tested.

The chemistry between Goode and Palmer has already encouraged the makers to hint of future series.

Screen time

Classic Albums - BBC4, 9pm

An evening of programmes about Amy Winehouse begins with this documentary about the recording of her classic 2006 album Back to Black.

Producer Salaam Remi talks about recording Winehouse’s voice in the front room of his house in Miami, using “simple at-home tricks”. The homely atmosphere went beyond the sessions. Winehouse cooked “giant meatballs” for the musicians, and even made tea during the recording of Me and Mr Jones. The kettle can be heard whistling halfway through the finished song. It’s a warm-hearted film, and a reminder that Winehouse’s talent went beyond her extraordinary voice. In archive clips, the singer explains the inspiration behind her most famous song, Rehab.

The Score - London Live, 9pm

Advice to all almost-retired thieves — don’t take one last job. Alas, safe-buster Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) has set his combination-crackers on springing a sceptre, a French national treasure, from a super-secure customs house. Marlon Brando, in his final screen role, is the fence who hands Nick this dubious gig.

What to Watch - Sunday, London Live, 5pm

The geezers in King of Thieves are less than diamond, these career criminals planning and executing one of the most audacious heists in British history — the robbery of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, which netted between

£14 million and £100 million, depending on who’s talking. Director James Marsh, screenwriter Joe Penhall and star Charlie Cox discuss what they made of the story when they first heard it.

Booty of another kind is addressed by Cherry Healey this week, who discusses her new series Sex, Knives & Liposuction, the lure of surgery, and the double-standards that exist in the way men and women’s bodies are celebrated.

ITV Vanity Fair - in pictures

1/9

Set the Box

Vanity Fair - Sunday, ITV, 9pm

In normal times, Gwyneth Hughes’s breezy adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel would be a major talking point. It has beautiful bonnets, an all-star cast — Olivia Cooke, below, as Becky Sharp, Suranne Jones as Miss Pinkerton — and has a contemporary sheen from director James Strong. The problem? It clashes with Bodyguard. But (say it quietly) Vanity Fair is rather good.

Box Fresh

American Vandal - Netflix

Series one of this true-crime mockumentary surprised many by bringing emotional depth to a story about two high-school nerds investigating the spraying of phallic symbols. Season two goes deeper. The story centres on Kevin McClain (Travis Tope), who confesses to the crimes. It’s a balancing act between laxative-powered gross-outs and social satire, but underneath there’s something poignant.

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