You know that feeling where you love a TV show so much that you are willing to forgive it almost anything?
Well, the latest series of Killing Eve had been testing my limits since its arrival late last month.
Episode three, which was shown on BBC1 last night, almost pushed me over the edge.
It wasn’t so much that I was shocked or outraged by the inhuman nature of the scene in which Villanelle’s Russian mentor Dasha (Dame Harriet Walter) dumped a wailing baby in a bin so she could eat her stylish al fresco lunch in peace.
It was more that it confirmed my worries about this show. It has run out of ideas and is now running around in circles.
And yet.
While “binning the baby” may well in time become the new “jumping the shark”, I’m not quite ready to cancel this show.
Partly because I almost gave up on another credulity-stretching spy caper, Homeland, a few series back – and look how well they turned that ship around.
But mainly because Fiona Shaw is still brilliant. With Shaw in such captivating form as grieving MI6 spy Carolyn Martens, to cancel Killing Eve now would be to throw the baby out with the bath water.
When it comes to an onscreen depiction of loss and grief, the two minutes Carolyn spent listening to Dido’s Lament in her vintage Mercedes in the underground car park in episode two was more moving than all twelve half-hours of Ricky Gervais’s After Life put together. (“Got my sandwiches. I’m fine.”)
Any scene featuring Carolyn – a woman who can chair meetings from her bubble bath – is the gift that makes the annoying stuff elsewhere seem bearable.
You don’t find Villanelle (Jodie Comer) charmingly evil anymore and feel that more thought has gone into her skirts than into her scripts? Fine, here’s some Fiona Shaw.
You’re finding Eve (Sandra Oh) a little pathetic? Have some Fiona.
You think the once-cool soundtrack now sounds like they’ve gone back and found more songs by the same artists that were in series one that aren’t as good their songs in series one were? Shaw can help you get over that too.
She’s so good she almost make me forget how bored I am with the central love story between Eve and Villanelle, the Pepe Le Pew and Penelope of the spy world.
I mean, I get that it makes for great fan art and all that. I just wish I could root for them as a couple.
That said, this series has already left me in no doubt that they totally deserve each other.
The worrying news is that their game of Sapphic cat and mouse looks set to carry on and on.
It has already been announced that this third series will not be the last.
With that in mind I have a simple message/warning for the producers: No four without Shaw.
