"I Have a Very Exciting Life"
Killing Eve is a cat-and-mouse thriller that becomes something stranger and more obsessive. Sandra Oh plays Eve Polastri, an MI5 officer bored with desk work who becomes obsessed with tracking a female assassin. Jodie Comer plays Villanelle, the assassin—a psychopath with style, humor, and an increasing obsession with Eve. Their relationship drives the show: hunter and hunted, predator and prey, eventually something that looks like love.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge developed the show from Luke Jennings' novels, and her sensibility shapes the first season. The violence is brutal but staged with wit. The comedy is dry and surprising. Villanelle kills people in ways that are horrible and funny simultaneously—an ice pick through the eye, perfume that triggers anaphylactic shock. She treats murder as performance art.
Jodie Comer is astonishing. Villanelle is playful, cruel, childish, petulant, charming, and terrifying—sometimes in the same scene. She switches accents and personas like costumes, always authentic in performance even as she's entirely fake. Sandra Oh matches her as Eve, whose competence is matched only by her tendency toward self-destruction. Their cat-and-mouse game spans four seasons, with each season written by a different showrunner, leading to an inconsistent overall arc.
The first season is one of the great television thrillers—funny, tense, surprising, and emotionally complex. Subsequent seasons struggle to maintain that quality. The show keeps resetting the Eve-Villanelle dynamic, never quite committing to what they mean to each other. The final season is widely considered a disappointment, ending a story that deserved better.
But for the first two seasons especially, Killing Eve is electric television. The performances alone make it essential viewing. Comer's Villanelle is one of the great television villains—protagonist? antihero?—of the streaming era.
Characters & Acting (10): Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh are both doing career-best work. Comer's Villanelle is unpredictable and mesmerizing. Oh's Eve is relatable and frustrating in equal measure.
Resolution (4): The finale is widely disliked. The show never commits to what Eve and Villanelle mean to each other. The ending feels like a betrayal of the early seasons' promise.
Narrative Drive (8): The chase is thrilling. Each season has momentum. But the repetitive resets hurt the overall arc.
"Nice Face" (S1E1) — The introduction. Eve and Villanelle established. The tone set.
"I Don't Want to Be Free" (S1E8) — The season one finale. Eve and Villanelle finally meet. A knife. A wound. An obsession.
"Beautiful Monster" (S2E4) — Villanelle and Eve team up. The dynamic shifts. The chemistry is undeniable.
US: Hulu, Prime Video
UK: BBC iPlayer