Killing Eve

[Psab keel]

My wife and I discovered this show last year and we just finished the third season yesterday. With only one season left in the coming year we eagerly await to see how it concludes.

It's intelligent and darkly humorous. The characters are nuanced and interesting without ever becoming cliches of the genre. The performances are absolutely stellar. Especially Sandra Oh and Julie Comer. Their chemistry is palpable and the writing is so well executed that it makes me wonder why a lot of American television shows can't seem to get their act together and drag on far too long. It's the perfect example of being able to take fictional characters that are so vastly different from me and make them so engaging and real that I can't take my eyes off of them.

I have no interest whatsoever in the gender politics of the show's development or creation, but to it's credit it remains a fantastic piece of fiction that's made with real craft and wit to which I applaud the creator's efforts.

My wife and I have been consistently impressed. If you enjoy crime thrillers with twists you don't expect I highly recommend it.

 

[Riceball]

The reason why American TV can drag on for "too long" is because of a fundamentally different approach to television in the US vs the UK. While the UK may be ok with much shorter seasons than the US, and running series for a set number of seasons all planned ahead, the US (TV industry) doesn't like that model. Prior to streaming, it was 20 plus episode seasons, almost always episodic, and would run for as long as the network was happy with the ratings they were pulling in. Streaming has changed that somewhat, serial series instead of episodic, 10 - 13 episode seasons, and subscriptions instead of ratings (to a degree) but they still follow the run until they're no longer getting the numbers the service desires. B5 was the rare exception that tried to buck the status quo and was planned to only run for 5 seasons and it nearly failed in that.

Unless more shows come out with a planned number of seasons for the series to run its course and simply end, I don't think that anything is going to change in the US. Audiences have been accustomed to this model for far too long to simply accept a limited run series. They want to see to their favorite shows run for as long as they can and a new set of episodes every year or so.

 

[Psab keel]

I think there's a place with both formats but sometimes I prefer the shorter form shows overseas because often American shows drag on long after the story has reached a natural conclusion.