Villanelle and Eve’s deadly dance resumes in Killing Eve season three
Killing Eve is among the best, and certainly the most addictive, shows on television.
Eddie Cockrell gives his top recommendations for this week’s viewing on the box.
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Free-to-air
“Trouble is not interested in me,” American-raised British Security Service MI5 agent and self-described “intelligence agency grunt” Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) said wearily in the very first episode of compulsively watchable globe-hopping spy thriller Killing Eve two years ago. Yet it is that very disturbance, in the form of Oksana “Villanelle” Astankova (Jodie Comer), the psychopathic assassin she’s been tasked with tracking down, and the quite dangerous, dauntingly complex and often darkly funny relationship they develop that makes this propulsive entertainment among the best, and certainly the most addictive, shows on television.
Owing to the ABC’s locked-in schedule, the network is premiering the third season exclusively on its free online iview service direct from the US, prior to the free-to-air premiere in its regular slot next weekend. Viewers looking for that next great binge, or fans who want to refresh themselves prior to the new series, can catch season one on Stan or purchase both seasons from Google Play or iTunes (for those who can stand the wait, iview will have the second series in June).
Killing Eve was initially adapted for television by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, then fresh off the first season of eventual sensation Fleabag, from prolific author Luke Jennings’s 2018 novel, Codename Villanelle, which was itself a compilation of four Kindle edition novellas published between 2014 and 2016. Waller-Bridge set the template for the show’s fast-paced and irreverent tone as the first season showrunner and lead writer.
Eve is fired from her job, only to be covertly rehired by Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw), head of the Russian section of British foreign intelligence agency MI6, to track the prolific killer. Learning through her handler, Konstantin (Kim Bodnia), that Eve is on her trail, the assassin becomes obsessed with her pursuer, and a twisted, unpredictable, international relationship is born. The second series features equally imaginative killings and more picturesque travel (Amsterdam, Paris, Rome), though it at times skirts dangerously close to parodying the thing it had so triumphantly become. As the third series begins, both Eve and Oksana are recovering from their climactic Rome showdown: the eternally fashion-conscious former assassin tries but fails at marriage before landing in Barcelona and the continuing contentious relationship with initial trainer Dasha (welcome cast newcomer Harriet Walter).
Meanwhile, the recovering Eve has retreated to a back-of-house kitchen job in the southwest London Korean enclave of New Malden. The embattled MI6 head is under increasing fire, with son Kenny having quit the unit to become an online investigative journalist; “That’s very British of you,” he tells Eve, when she realises he’s still working in his spare time to uncover the shadowy criminal enterprise known as The Twelve and tells him “I prefer things buried”. By the end of this first hour it’s clear that’s not going to happen. “Just so you know,” Villanelle tells someone of her renewed interest in the profession at which she’s frighteningly proficient, “I’m something of a big deal in this industry.”
Killing Eve, Monday, noon, ABC iview; Sunday, April 19, 9.30pm, ABC.
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Bites
Australia’s Black Summer: Fire Country. Monday, 8.30pm, SBS Viceland
“I’m hoping we’ll pull through it, but I think more than likely there’ll be casualties somewhere along the line.” A comment on the coronavirus? No, the speaker is Cobargo-born Shane Black, interviewed in January after the fires ruined swaths of southeastern NSW. He’s talking to Gavin Butler, young Melbourne-based journalist for the Asia Pacific bureau of American-based Canadian broadcasting firm Vice Media. Butler drove to Quaama and Cobargo just after New Year’s Eve and spoke to residents who can only be described as heroes: Rebecca Perry is with Butler in the ruins of her house and says, “I have nothing”, yet manages a broad smile; Black confesses “I’ve never cried so hard in my life” and awkwardly admits “farming’s such a hard thing, and it can … make it hard for you”; and this half-hour film’s poet laureate, Cobargo volunteer firey Andrew Sunder Spencer, after finding out via text his house burned while he was protecting the homes of others, says of his community “there’s a softness and openness, that’s unusual, I have to say … But life pops out”.
MasterChef: Back to Win. Monday, 7.30pm, Ten
“I don’t need this, I want this!” says first season runner-up Poh Ling Yeow to guest mentor Gordon Ramsay, thus heralding the arrival of a renewed MasterChef: Back to Win to hungry Australian screens. Unlike Survivor and My Kitchen Rules, no former winners are returning. Many, like season 11’s Tessa, fell just short on their first attempt, or like season seven’s Reynold, bundled out on a failed dessert. Most attribute their willingness to return to increased maturity: for Dani and Callum it was parenthood; for Sarah and Tracey, trying their hands in the food game themselves. MasterChef concluded its 11th season afflicted by languishing ratings, a format that had grown somewhat tired and suffered under the unwelcome controversy surrounding one judge’s questionable business practices. Which could explain the three new and relatively unknown evaluators, season four champion Andy Allen, hatted chef Jock Zonfrillo and food writer Melissa Leong. They’re perhaps more appropriate to today’s audience. With them come moments of true connection and sheer delight: as it turns out, Australia might not have wanted this, but time and circumstances suggest we needed the return of MasterChef.
The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury Australia. Saturday, 7.35pm, SBS
They can be seen stacked and piled in colourful displays every autumn round about now, and we’ve all eaten a fair few of them over the years. They’re there just now, though we’re lately more concerned with getting straight to the toilet paper. Worry not, they’re resistant to hoarding, as Cadbury Australia for Easter this year will make 477 million eggs and 14 million bunnies, so there’s plenty to go around. As you munch on them while isolating with your family, watch their journey from Queensland paddocks to factories in Melbourne and Hobart (using Ghanaian chocolate) to Australia’s markets in this fourth iteration of inspired SBS series slow TV. Over three deliciously slow hours, director Adam Kay, shows us how it’s done. Of particular note is the film’s embrace of the historical events that shaped this unique and broadbased supply chain over the decades. With an often mischievously evocative score by composers Amanda Brown and Caitlin Yeo, this tongue-in-cheek epic will have you racing back to the shops and, for once, ignoring the loo paper.
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Pay TV/Streaming
The Devil is in disaster’s detail
Sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed a Discovery Channel special this past week called COVID-19: Battling the Devil, which is, among other things, a vivid reminder that television is usually at the forefront of breaking news and dependable reporting.
The hour-long special about the coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan and the men and women at the forefront of managing the outbreak wasn’t available in time for the previous column’s deadline, but that’s perhaps just as well: in the interim, questions have arisen about the accuracy of China’s initial figures on the number of victims. This, in turn, brings up the age-old question of propaganda versus veracity. Seen as the latter, both Battling the Devil and the upcoming Pandemic: COVID-19 are enlightening and ultimately upbeat tributes to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of an adversity unequalled in size and scope.
To look at the shows in chronological order, Battling the Devil is somewhat unnecessarily narrated by retired US Navy SEAL and aspiring Hollywood actor Joel Lambert, who may have been selected for a certain ruggedness the proceedings don’t necessarily require.
Assembled from an astonishingly detailed and seemingly massive cache of documentary and news footage, the special begins on New Year’s Eve 2019, a simpler time to be sure, but soon charts the Wuhan outbreak using on-camera interviews with key players in the drama. These include Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital director Zhang Dingyu, doctor and SARS outbreak veteran Xia Jia’an and Beijing scientist Tan Wenjie. By the 12-minute mark Wuhan is in lockdown, at which point the action shifts to those two massive isolation hospitals built in just 10 days and interview footage of construction manager Yuan Xugiang — who, according to the narration, postponed his impending nuptials to volunteer for the high-stress job. The show’s final update comes on February 23, which indicates just how quickly the program was prepared.
Pandemic: COVID-19 begins with a recap of events in Wuhan and the US that was assembled when the international death toll stood at 15,000, which was roughly a month ago. More critical of China’s slow initial response, the program presents an exhaustive assemblage of quality footage, including cell-phone video and material from Chinese TV broadcasts.
Among the talking head authorities on hand to guide viewers through the initial chaos are University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Ajay Sethi, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations Yanzhong Huang, University College London cell biologist Jennifer Rohn and New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr, who says with typically dry New York wit that “things went crazy in China”. American teacher Diana Adama wanders through the deserted Wuhan on day three of the lockdown and reflects on it later via an online video link, and the Diamond Princess outbreak is followed (“this sucks,” says one American passenger diagnosed with the disease).
There’s even a photo of Dr Li Wenliang, the initial Chinese whistleblower who was reprimanded by the Chinese government but then exonerated, only to succumb to the disease in early February. Academic Thomas Friedrich provides a rare moment of levity when he describes a virus as “a piece of bad news wrapped in protein”.
Amid the daily flood of new information on the pandemic, these programs, produced independently from one another yet complementary in their approach, offer a cogent and ultimately useful summary of how we got here. The when and the how of the crisis’s conclusion, while certainly beyond the scope of these hours as well as our current knowledge, will be a welcome conclusion to an unfortunate yet instructive trilogy.
Pandemic: COVID-19, Sunday, 7.30pm, Discovery Channel.
COVID-19: Battling the Devil, streaming on Foxtel On Demand, Foxtel GO and Foxtel Now.
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Bites
Ghosts. Streaming on Stan
As droll as last week’s pick, Fawlty Towers, is manic, Ghosts is a very English half-hour sitcom of much more recent vintage that finds a young couple the beneficiaries of an unexpected inheritance in the form of the sprawling yet decrepit English country estate, Button House (actually West Horsley Place in Surrey). What they don’t know but find out soon enough is that the house is haunted by a clutch of ghosts comprised of various people who lived and/or died on the land in various historical periods. Ghosts was created by a half-dozen or so of the minds behind the children’s live-action sketch comedy show Horrible Histories, with co-creator Mathew Baynton, who plays Thomas Thorne, the ghost of a failed Romantic poet, explaining those kids were now grown up and “hopefully we’re making something so they can continue to watch us”. The strategy is working nicely, as the show has been picked up for two additional six-episode seasons. Perhaps the funniest aspect of Ghosts is that the spirits are trapped by the mysteries of fate, and the couple by an unbreakable mortgage.
Tiger King. Streaming on Netflix
The Tiger King story is developing as fast as the coronavirus crisis that has made it a viral hit, so for all the latest updates look to the goss columns, as this is but a humble overview of the show itself. Often appended with the phrase “murder, mayhem and madness” but titled onscreen simply as Tiger King, the seven episodes averaging 45 minutes each block out the labyrinthine story of Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, nee Schreibvogel but popularly known as Joe Exotic, the flamboyant Kansas-born entrepreneur, gay former small-town police chief and aspiring country-and-western singer who gained a measure of fame with the Oklahoma animal park where he raised hundreds of tigers, lions and other big cats. Exotic, who at press time was reported to have symptoms of the coronavirus, is serving 22 years in federal prison for trying to hire someone to kill his Florida-based nemesis, Big Cat Rescue CEO Carole Baskin. There are certainly more powerful true-crime series out there — Netflix’s own Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer comes readily to mind — but Tiger King is truly strange, and profoundly American.
Leavenworth. Streaming on Stan
“Rural Oklahoma is about as miserable as rural Afghanistan,” says Clint Lorance, the gay army first lieutenant who had been serving a 19-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kentucky, for the war crime of murdering two civilians in Kandahar province eight years ago, “and I can say that because I’ve been to both”. Specifically, Lorance, the problematic subject of the ambiguous yet fascinating five-part Netflix documentary Leavenworth, hails from “Texlahoma”, a region that straddles the Texas-Oklahoma border and is a cradle of the flag-waving, gun-toting, pro-life and generally Trump-loving values many Americans hold dear. And therein lies the dilemma: in those parts, joining the military is a higher calling, so Lorance’s case has become a lightning rod of ethical and political division. New York Times writer Dave Philipps unwittingly provides Leavenworth with a telling motto of sorts when he observes “the truth is a practice and not a destination”, and the film is a journey that some will find annoying, and others intriguing.
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