Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer continue their great work but it’s hard not to see Series 2 of Killing Eve as a slight downturn on the first season
“It’s OK if you feel weird. You just killed someone for the first time. With an axe.”
After such a strong opening season, there was perhaps an inevitability to Series 2 of Killing Eve not quite matching up to it. After all, in a game of cat-and-mouse, where do you go when they’ve met (and the mouse has stabbed the cat)? It’s a question that new head writer Emerald Fennell never quite seems 100% sure of, even as she creates an entertaining journey along the way.
So after Eve stabs Villanelle, she’s recruited by MI6 to look into another serial killer, another woman working for The Twelve, whilst also dealing with the fallout of pushing her relationship with Villanelle to a new level. They continue to spar but the way in which the show engineers bringing them together doesn’t quite come off right. Killing Eve is at its best when completely unpredictable and this series doesn’t always hit that mark.
One of the slightly frustrating things is the number of fantastic character played by fantastic actors who are practically just cameos. Bringing in such iconic talent as Zoë Wanamaker and Barbara Flynn and then just giving them a single scene ought to be illegal. At least Adrian Scarborough’s pathological Raymond gets a fair crack of the whip, and Julian Barratt’s oddball gets a whole episode to play out his dementedness.
Still, Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer both revel in the rich complexity of the characters and the slipperiness of the connection between them both. The progression of their relationship intersects interestingly with others too, Fiona Shaw’s brilliant Carolyn is slightly less of the puppetmaster she longs to be here as she also negotiates with the presence of Kim Bodnia’s Konstantin and their own power struggles.
