Sandra Oh in Killing Eve.handout
Explaining the impact of Killing Eve, let alone its unique quality, is a Herculean task.
Somebody in the TV racket here coined the term “prestige popcorn,” not specifically to nail down Killing Eve but as a general idea. It would apply to premium-cable quality content that is not dead serious but fun while being incredibly smart.
Might it be applied to this series? Well, yes and no. Depends on the perspective. Its first season had enormous impact because it was fun but not frivolous. That is, it’s not frivolity to consider that the show was, as star Sandra Oh put it, “examining and taking the female psyche seriously.”
Killing Eve is essentially about MI5 employee Eve (Oh), who becomes obsessed with tracking down cold-as-ice assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer), who, in turn, becomes obsessed with Eve. It brought Golden Globe and Emmy wins for Oh and was the most critically acclaimed new series of last year.
When Killing Eve returns on April 7 (on Bravo in Canada), it picks up 30 seconds after the season one finale, where – spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it – Eve stabs Villanelle, but doesn’t kill her.
According to the core cast and producers who were here at the TV critics’ tour to introduce season two, the intensely weird relationship between the two central women gets even stranger. In material shown to critics, Villanelle is in hospital and tells a fellow patient, a teenage boy, that a woman stabbed her. “Women don’t stab,” the boy says with certainty. Villanelle replies, “It surprised me too. She did it to show me how much she cares about me.”
Thus, we know the perverse humour continues and that heady mixture of violence, glamour and wit is intact. According to writer/executive producer Emerald Fennell, who replaces Phoebe Waller-Bridge as writer this season, “I think the story shows how many of us are monsters, because the darker the humour gets, I think the more people get it.”
But according to Sandra Oh, who essentially bossed the panel, the humour is only a doorway for the viewer to enter into and connect with the underlying significance. She says the series “examines and listens to women.”
Fiona Shaw, who plays Eve’s boss on the series, has an even more grand take on the show’s significance. “You know, van Gogh painted those olive trees. And he did them so well that nobody can look at olive trees again without thinking of van Gogh. And I feel that about this show. You suddenly feel that the world has shifted a little bit and that no show that women are on will ever be quite as straightforward again. And I think that’s very exciting.”
Further, Shaw says that the show’s unpredictable humour has political significance. “There’s something in the humour that is about the instability of the time we’re in now. The tumultuous political landscape in both England and the U.S. This series absolutely nails that, in that nobody has any idea what is going to happen next.”
Those are rather large claims for a series that many viewers adore as a fun ride, a complex cat-and-mouse game between two strong, idiosyncratic female characters.
However, the extrapolation of huge cultural significance from a thriller series illustrates both the strangeness of this period, politically and culturally, and the changes that have been wrought through greater emphasis on female-centric drama written by women.
Interestingly, Jodie Comer – who speaks in a soft Liverpudlian accent – is more down-to-earth about the show’s significance and its appeal. She declines to agree that her character Villanelle is a psychopath and says the show’s capricious approach to character and humour is what keeps people glued to it.
“Just as you think that Villanelle is showing remorse, she does something where you go, ‘No, I just don’t even know this girl at all.’ We’ve really played with emotions.”
To some viewers, calling Killing Eve an example of “prestige popcorn” is a good fit. It’s a fair assessment. It simply plays with expectations, in a sophisticated-thriller style.
To others, especially the women involved in it, the series violates in a good way accepted standards in the exploration of female characters. They feel they have been set free. The experience has been invigorating and inspirational. Perhaps calling analysis of Killing Eve a “Herculean” task is wrong. That’s male. And this show isn’t about males or the male perspective at all.