Jodie Comer as Villanelle in Killing Eve.Anika Molnar/BBCA/BBC AMERICA / Courtesy of Crave
When it arrived four years ago, it was a sensation. Killing Eve broke all the rules and got away with it. By the time it aired in Canada Sandra Oh was already Emmy-nominated for her starring role in it. Based on the Villanelle series of novellas by Luke Jennings, and adapted by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in broad structure it was a cat-and-mouse spy thriller that felt familiar. But the tone was different; while transgressive, it was jaunty, buoyant and very funny.
We met the stylish, cold assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) as she flitted about Europe killing guys. And we met MI5 officer Eve Polastri (Oh), who was drawn inexorably to Villanelle. These two women were engaged in something that only they understood.
The fourth season of Killing Eve is here (Sunday, CTV Drama Channel, 9 p.m., and streams on Crave) after a long delay and it has retained core elements – the visual panache, the flaky humour and the sheer weirdness of Villanelle. She’s changed, she says and tells herself. She’s living the good Christian life in England, in a vicar’s home. She eats what the Bible says, including a lot of loaves and fishes. The vicar’s wary of her, as is his cat, named Lucifer, who can spot evil, as cats do.
Catch up on the best streaming TV of 2021 with our holiday guide
Eve is working for a private security firm with partner Yusuf (Robert Gilbert), a well-chiselled fella and they carry on like they’re madly in love but only flirting, so far. Also, Eve is fitter, stronger and determined to find and possibly kill the leader of “The Twelve,” that organization using assassins to commit murders, Villanelle being their former star operative.
Listen, if you liked Killing Eve from the get-go, the cheerful weirdness is still there. In fact, its strangeness gets darker. You won’t believe the person Villanelle encounters on her journey to Jesus. You won’t believe how ruthless Eve has become. But you can relax into its boundary-breaking bizarreness. The two women are obsessed with each other. They have united before and split before, with dead bodies strewn in their wake, and now Eve’s extreme disinterest in Villanelle looks like a case of in-denial, while Villanelle’s passion for being a better person to impress Eve looks scandalously immature. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is no longer involved but this is still bonkers-good TV, a rock ‘n’ roll, almost all-female take on the spy thriller. The previous three seasons are streaming on Crave, so if you’ve skipped it, watch it all from the start and enjoy its macabre beauty.
Also airing/streaming this weekend
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Travis Kalanick and Uma Thurman as Arianna Huffington in Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.Elizabeth Morris/Showtime / Crave
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (Sunday, linear Crave, 10 p.m. and streaming on Crave) is the first instalment of an anthology series in which each season will explore a story that “rocked the business world to its core and changed culture.” Here, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays, with some gusto, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and CEO who was ultimately ousted in a boardroom coup. As such it’s all about ego and vanity among the “bros” of Silicon Valley, their bluster and their often ruthless attempts to scam others. Made with a full-throttle visual energy that sometimes works and sometimes feels wearying, it could make you loathe these self-proclaimed disrupters. Its centre is the sort-of father/son relationship between Kalanick and mentor Bill Gurley (Kyle Chandler), a quiet-spoken Texas venture capitalist who bet on Uber’s success, but faced Kalanick’s monstrous ego and delusion. In eight parts, weekly, it’s so pumped about these people it can make you exhausted.
Finally if you want a different kind of reality dating show, one that doesn’t feature improbably attractive and dumb twentysomethings, try My Mom, Your Dad (HBO Canada, Saturday, 8 p.m.). It’s all about middle-aged singles, ones with adult kids who want their parents to find love. Seven adult children take their parents to a retreat, where the older people are told that “dating consultants” will help them find a match in the house. Thing is, those consultants are actually the kids, who are in a nearby house and monitoring everything. And interfering. Not as clever as it thinks it is, but definitely different.
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