Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia, Edward Bluemel, Camille Cottin, Robert Gilbert, Anjana Vasan, Adeel Akhta, Imogen Daines, Steve Oram.
All good things must end, and all celebrity obsessed, all public fascinations must finally be allowed to go out in a blaze of glory.
There have been few series that have caught the public’s imagination as much as Killing Eve, and perhaps even less that when it comes right down it, when it is actually scrutinised and boiled down to its component parts, is willing to take the audience on a trip that appeals to base function and highbrow voyeurism in a tale that is seems complicated but is actually a wonderful, well-planned tease.
There is no doubt that Killing Eve has been a sensation, it has encouraged conversation, it has spawned debate, argument, it has satisfied and infuriated in equal measure, it has had the power at its disposal to make people think, and that is all you can ultimately ask of any television drama; and in its fourth and final series, that measure of success has been ramped up and proven as the writers and creatives confidently show that even in an ending there is always another way to take the story on if needed, and the body count ever onwards.
Leaving aside the two main leads of Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, the fourth series benefitted greatly from what might be considered the silent partner in the dramatic tale of assassins, killers, and spies, the superb Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens. Ms. Oh and Ms. Comer may have been the captivating flourish of the last four years, but it is to Fiona Shaw that the series has a bedrock in which the achievement was secured; and as her life was more forensically examined through the eyes of the character’s younger self as she took her first steps on the road to becoming the master spy, so to was her place assured as arguably the more compelling, certainly more effective member of the team.
The sense of sadness driven by Fiona Shaw, and alongside new character Pam, a psychopathic mortician, played superbly by Anjana Vasan, counterbalances the light spirit captured by Villanelle and Eve Polastri, the will they won’t they moment that it seems may have been at the forefront of the series rather than the idea of pushing the effective undercurrent of the investigation at hand; both sides asking to live, but understanding the sacrifice required to do so. It its wake leaves charm, the watcher, the viewer and the voyeur meld together as if one, and it is to that dominating effect that the series succeeds.
Always leave the audience wanting more, and whilst Eve may no longer be on the hit list, Killing Eve will go down in history as being one of the most dedicatedly admired show of its genre in the 21st Century.
Ian D. Hall