Following James Nash’s assessment of the early promise of series three, Flora Snelson looks back at the series as a whole.
“A little overdramatic, don’t you think?” Villanelle asks Carolyn in the Series 3 finale, as they meet on a balcony in the rafters of the Royal Albert Hall.
One of the most exquisite buildings in the country, the Victorian concert hall is a far cry from the humble off-licence where Carolyn offered Eve work in the first episode of Series 1. Killing Eve careers dangerously towards the spy genre tropes it once subverted, trading corner shop radio chatter for Mahler – the soundtrack of this clandestine meeting signposts the series’ slow slide from original to obvious.
In the conversation that follows, Villanelle momentarily forgets one of the many new characters and when asked who perpetrated two of the series’ major killings, her disinterested shrugs mirrors our own. In pursuit of decadence, the writers subject us to too many notes – each compete for brief relevance, few effect lasting change, and the climax is far from harmonious.
The series never really finds its feet; it stumbles over two disruptive events – episodes four and five – which lie awkwardly in the path of an advancing storyline. The latter is a fine example of the series successfully branching out into something new, but ultimately the diversions to Poland and Russia distract and prevent momentum from building across the series.
Nobody was clamouring for Eve’s tedious husband to feature – Niko himself looks reluctant, a sacrificial plot device dragged on screen to serve his purpose, then be hastily discarded. Nothing more than a shock-factor fix, a whole episode in the making, his almost death serves the same purpose as the many that follow – leading us down a blind alley and frittering precious minutes. When Eve’s pathetic overtures at Niko’s hospital bedside are rejected by an automated voice barking “piss off”, we endure a rehearsal of the same sentiment which parted the couple last series, all the while wondering whether this cheap joke is the sole end of its long-winded set up.
Gemma Whelan shines in a crowd of two-dimensional supporting characters; in her portrayal of the naive Geraldine she is at once endearing and irritating. Her desperate attempts to connect with her cold mother provide a nice counterpoint to Villanelle’s search for family. But while the assassin’s battles with a rejecting mother pack neatly into a single episode and swiftly arrive at a fiery conclusion, Geraldine’s pleas in the finale fall again on deaf ears, leaving the pair on the same footing they started on.
“Series 3 feels careless, unpolished, as though you are reading the minutes from the writers’ room’s initial brainstorm rather than admiring the finished product.”
The series is blighted by a confused economy of narrative; some plotlines stagnate and refuse to resolve, while other events are abrupt, lacking sensitive build-up and catching you off guard.
Chief among these is the finale, which claims to answer the “will-they-won’t-they” question which has gently driven the show right from the off, but goes largely unaddressed throughout the rest of the third series. Amid a tangle of plots and intrigue, the relationship between Villanelle and Eve is not given sufficient space to percolate, making its climax clumsy and unjustified.
Simply put, the latest series mishandles the simple mandate attached to the gilded Waller-Bridge baton: to preserve and develop the magnetic attraction that lies at the heart of the show.
Series 1 made it look stupidly easy. Eve and Villanelle only share 6% of the screen time, yet each of the eight episodes is laced with intimacy – the perfume which lingers on Eve’s neck, the dress which clings to her waist even before the pair have knowingly met. The unglamorous sharing of leftover shepherd’s pie is a quiet monument to the relationship developing centre stage delicately, unobtrusively.
Series 3 warps the leads’ delicate dynamic into a noisy sideshow. Swapping subtleties for melodrama, their relationship is plotted out in a series of grand gestures – kissing mid-brawl on public transport with an audience of baffled strangers, throwing a cake off a rooftop – these heightened acts belong in a television show, but not this one.
The closing scene is a tender moment in its own right, as the setting of the bridge lends itself nicely to their shared quest for middle ground between the “monster” and the “normal stuff” that each seek to find in each other. Off the back of a series devoid of nuance, however, it jars – a shoehorned scrap of romance that smacks of a last-gasp effort to keep the show “on brand”.
Series 3 feels careless, unpolished, as though you are reading the minutes from the writers’ room’s initial brainstorm rather than admiring the finished product. It’s a scattergun approach where everything makes the cut and nothing really sticks, at the grave cost of the show’s greatest asset.
As ever, it’s worth watching for the talents of Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer alone, which bear up extraordinarily well under the great albatross of Series 1 – such scintillating writing yet unmatched. The pressure to dazzle in its shadow has inspired an urge for bigger, better, more – a weakness for drama and excess which even Villanelle has turned back on. The show must now follow her lead.
Words by Flora Snelson