Why Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Killing Eve will be your new TV obsession

A fresh twist on the cat and mouse assassin story from the Fleabag star

Sandra Oh's M15 operative Eve Polastri in Killing Eve is no 007 or Ethan Hunt, but that's what makes her so relatable - and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's new series so wonderfully unique.

The eight-part series from the award-winning writer is a fresh new twist on the classic cat-and-mouse assassin tale; in this instance both the agent and assassin are female.

Eve is trundling along as a bored agent "whose desk job does not fulfil her fantasies of being a spy", while also suffering in a lacklustre marriage, until she becomes intoxicated by a stealthy Russian assassin called Villanelle, played by Doctor Foster's Jodie Comer.

BBC America
BBC America

BBC president and general manager of BBC America Sarah Barnett told Variety: "Cat-and-mouse and assassin stories have been told so many times and for good reason: There is an enduring appeal there.

"What was so fascinating was that making these two leads female casts the genre in a whole new light. You realise how implicitly masculine this form of storytelling has been."

Waller-Bridge also disclosed the difficulties of getting a female-led drama like Killing Eve made due to inequalities in the industry, after years of popular culture celebrating mostly men as agents or spies, or vilifying them as violent assassins. Finally we have a woman writing about women in vocations that are too often associated with men.

"There was a meeting at one point where someone actually said, 'We can't have too many women,' meaning it will look unbelievable," the actress continued. "I was like, 'What the f— are you talking about?' Not if it's written well and shot well."

Getty Images

Another refreshing twist is that the character Eve was originally written as a white female, with Oh adding to the publication: "It's about f—ing time. The character is not Asian, but there are a billion examples of the reverse where the source material or the character in the book was one ethnicity or another, and no one blinks an eye."

Dominique Charriau

The series, which is adapted from Luke Jennings' Villanelle novellas, opens with Comer's Villanelle smiling serenely at a young girl as she enjoys an ice cream, before getting up and knocking the little girl's ice cream over her lap.

This tells us everything we need to know about the character and the series - she's an unfeeling killer who murders her victims not just for money, but pure unadulterated pleasure. The series is slick and gripping, but rippling with black humour. The cast also includes Harry Potter's Fiona Shaw, David Haig and Kim Bodnia.

Killing Eve has already received critical acclaim in the US after premiering on BBC America, including an Emmy nomination for Oh. It's due to launch on BBC One in the UK in September.

Killing Eve airs on BBC One on September 15 at 9.15. BBC Three will make it available as a box set on BBC iPlayer.

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