“Kill you? I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? No, no, you… you complete me,” the Joker famously told Batman in 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” and the sentiment applies to the symbiotic yin and yang relationship between the central characters in BBC America‘s deliciously wicked and entertaining cat and mouse thriller “Killing Eve.” Created by unlikely author, Phoebe Waller-Bridge—more known for edgy U.K. sitcoms like Channel 4’s “Crashing” and BBC Three’s “Fleabag“— if her sensibilities seemed strange on the surface for a show about a determined, desk-bound MI5 officer who is tasked with finding a talented psychopathic assassin, they weren’t for long. With a dangerously poison-tipped blade and mischievously black comedic heart, “Killing Eve” took TV by storm in 2018 and with good reason: it is superb, giving star Sandra Oh a second shot at TV superstardom and creating a breakthrough performer in newcomer Jodie Comer.
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Season 1 of “Killing Eve” set up the world and stakes: bored and dissatisfied MI5 desk jockey Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh, outstanding) starts putting together the pieces of the mysterious puzzle when a series of high profile murders across several countries cause several red flags. Impressed by her dogged detective work, Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw), head of the Russia Section of MI6, recruits Polastri for an off-the-books assignment to track the killer: an attractive, brash, and loose cannon assassin named Villanelle (Jodie Comer, fabulous).
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Funny and whipsmart, “Killing Eve” Season 1 is a delightful, black-tinged spy thriller with an arch sense of humor. That easily could have been enough. But what makes Waller-Bridges show special is its surface ideas of obsession and the darker depths of their roots. “Killing Eve” builds to the fixation both figures have with one another: Polastri obsessed with finding out who Villanelle is, where she came from, what motivates her theatrical, showy style of killing and the assassin in turn, intrigued with whomever the M16 agent is, clever enough to follow the breadcrumbs and learn more about her. A complex dance of signals and messages, Villanelle starts to show off and Polastri starts to get closer and closer and it makes for a taut, tense and delectably terrific show.
But “Killing Eve” is really about the pangs behind obsession: the absence of fulfillment, the longing, and desire for something more. As Eve grows closer and closer to finding Villanelle, she finds true purpose and her marriage to Niko (Owen McDonnell) begins to fall apart. As Villanelle realizes how close she is to getting caught, the prospect delights her, she flirts with attention-seeking outrageousness, defies her bosses and begins to enrage her assigned handler Konstantin Vasiliev (an outstanding Kim Bodnia, whom some may remember from Nicolas Winding Refn‘s early films).
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Season 2 picks up literally: 30 seconds after Season 1 ends (some spoilers if you haven’t seen the previous season). After weeks of tracking, intrigue and deadly danger—including the death of Eve’s supervisor and dear friend Frank Haleton (Darren Boyd)—the cat and mouse have finally met. As suggested through some of the series, there’s a chemistry and even potential sexual element to their fascination with one another, the killer omnisexual and Polastri curious, but in their final faceoff, the British spy actually stabs Villanelle with a knife rather than consummate any kind of romance, much to her own surprise, as well.
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Season 2 kicks off with the fallout of that moment: Villanelle, bleeding, dying and on the run, and Polastri also hightailing it out of Paris because the Russian agents who oversee the assassin are sent in to clean up the mess.
All bets are off and as is repeated often, in what could be the theme of Season 2, “Circumstances have changed.” Those circumstances, as they apply to Polastri, are that she’s been rehired by M16 (she was fired for insubordination). For Villanelle, who shot (and seemingly killed her handler Konstantin), she’s not excommunicated and wanted dead (though that is the case briefly), but she’s been assigned to a new handler. But Villanelle, who has her own strange relationship with Konstantin, curious why he’s never tried to have sex with her (isn’t that so odd?? She thinks which speaks to her arrogance), isn’t about to take orders from a new person.
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However, she has little choice. The beginnings of Season 2 center on Villanelle finding some kind of safety so she can recuperate from her wounds. First, it’s a hospital (that she wants to leave asap before getting caught by the authorities that are looking for her) and then it’s into the arms of a would-be savior who turns out to be a kind of creepy, controlling pervert who wants to keep her imprisoned. For Polastri, it’s returning to Niko, her estranged marriage and the disgruntled M16 superiors willing to give her another shot. She has threefold problems: keeping Niko happy, but having to lie to him constantly, staying alive, as Villanelle is surely coming for revenge at some point and again, deceiving her managers and not letting them on to the full story of what transpired when she and the hired killer finally met.
It’s a season of deception and lies, survival, and fantasies leading to a pay-grade spy who is capable, but way in over her head —the mix and contradiction of skilled competency meeting messy, emotional human flaws are part of the joys and brilliance of the show. But it’s all setting the stage for what surely is a huge showdown eventually. While Waller-Bridge stepped down somewhat in Season 2 to delegate to a new head writer (Emerald Fennell), her DNA is very much in the mix and “Killing Eve” doesn’t miss a step in the second chapter (it’s unclear how many, if any, episodes Waller-Bridge writes because full Season 2 credits have not been released to press).
If there’s one minor knock on the show, it’s the go-go, groovy “Ocean’s 11“-esque music by Unloved, a band featuring composer/musician extraordinaire David Holmes (which to be fair, most people love). On its face, it’s a killer soundtrack of sexy, cool, exotic tunes, but boy, it’s trying so hard that it’s distracting. Still, “Killing Eve” might be otherwise perfect. A darkly comic drama about the anxiety of our existence, the desperate need for connection and the kismetic, magnetic thread between two individuals awoken to the fact that they may be fatedly fused together by the strange mysterious forces of the universe, “Killing Eve” is a riotously good time and an infectious show truly deserving of all “bingeworthy” praise. [A-]
