Despite bringing Harriet Walter in and giving Fiona Shaw more to do, Series 3 of Killing Eve flails with a lack of purpose
“Being hard on someone is sometimes what they need”
After a powerful first set of episodes, the second season of Killing Eve began to show signs of running out of steam as it struggled to figure out what story it wanted to tell after cat and mouse actually met. And sad to say, Series 3 battles once again but still can’t quite come up with a new raison d’être.
One of the main issues is vagueness of The Twelve, ostensibly the main villains of the piece but much in the vain of the crap Bond movies, an amorphous blob whose desires remain unclear. For most of this series, you’ve no real idea what anyone is actually trying to do, or stop, in terms of the big picture at least.
Once again, the slate is swept clean with the minor players, for instance the MI6 team replaced with Kenny’s fellow investigative journalists and a new underling for Carolyn. And once again, so many of them are treated as utterly disposable, too many of them killed off before getting a chance to make an impact so that we’d at least feel something for their passing.
The one that does register is poor Kenny, which lights a fire under Carolyn’s ass and thus gives Fiona Shaw the chance to do some great griefstricken-in-her-own-manner work. Sadly, it also misguidedly introduces her daughter Geraldine, a complete waste of Gemma Whelan as a painfully stilted family dynamic is thrust upon us.
And even if Harriet Walter is always good to watch, her introduction as Dasha – Villanelle’s old mentor – ends up being quite meandering as the show decides to delve deep into Villanelle’s past, something which just doesn’t work (why bother trying to humanise a psychopath…?) Comer works hard again but it really just feels like more of the same.
Sandra Oh by comparison doesn’t seem to get anywhere near as much to do, the show almost forgetting that she’s a co-lead. Her relationship with husband Niko – such as it is – lumbers her down now, given how messy it has gotten and frankly, Eve (and Oh) deserve better than they are given here. Let’s hope the final season can give her that.
