The success of the series helped propel the first book onto the best-seller lists, and allowed Jennings to quit his day job at The Observer. Sandra Oh’s performance as Eve was particularly lauded, and she won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors’ Guild and Critics’ Choice Television Awards for her portrayal. Critical reaction was no less enthusiastic: Killing Eve was included in more TV writers’ top tens for 2018, than any other show. For it became a word-of-mouth hit, with ratings increasing by two-thirds from the first episode to the last. But such was the advance buzz, that a second series was commissioned before even the first episode was broadcast.

It helped get the show picked up by BBC America, and in autumn 2016, the show was given the go-ahead for an eight episode first series. Killing Eve is considerably more active, and also reflects the shift in focus from the hunter to the hunted. Codename: Villanelle seems very passive, a label given to a character (and half-meaningless unless you’re an expert on French perfume). Initially pitched to Sky Living, they turned the project down, but it was reworked by writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to put more emphasis on Eve, and these modifications also triggered the title change. Which in turn explains the entry in his bibliography which stands out as most un- Villanelle like: his co-authorship of The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet…Ĭodename: Villanelle was optioned for the screen relatively quickly after the first novella, in spring 2014. These were mostly what Jennings calls “politely received but unprofitable novels,” adding “Our income was, to say the least, patchy.” That probably explains why he was dance critic at The Observer newspaper for 14 years. It wasn’t Jennings’s first published work: far from it, with Atlantic appearing back in 1995. It was followed by Villanelle: Hollowpoint in August, then Villanelle: Shanghai and Odessa in February and June of the following year.

Codename: Villanelle was originally self-published by Jennings as four separate novellas, the first (with the same name) appearing in February 2014. With the second series of Killing Eve starting this month, and one of our most eagerly anticipated TV shows of the year, it seems a good point to take a look back at Luke Jennings’s original source material, and its translation to the small screen. Credit: Entertainment Weekly “You are an evolutionary necessity.”

Code name villanelle