PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY (KILLING EVE, SEASON THREE)

When the final credits rolled on series two of 'Killing Eve,' there were already alarming signs that the show had peaked in its first series.

An adaptation of Luke Jennings' 'Villanelle' espionage novels, the jet black comedy was fresh, violent and very, very mischievous in its first run.

However the second time around, it seemed stale, unnecessarily outlandish and ill disciplined.

Heading into series three, the fear was that 'Killing Eve' would be mouldy and unsalvageable.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

Picking up from the shooting of Eve by Villanelle in Rome in Series Two, the third series finds her in Spain marrying another women.

All is going okay at the reception until Villanelle's mentor, Harriet Walter's tough as old nails, former gymnast Dasha Durzan appears.

Chaos erupts and soon Villanelle is on the road and being being lobbied by her old mentor to resume working as an assassin for the mysterious group, the Twelve.

Meanwhile, the unit run by Fiona Shaw's MI6 Russian section head Carolyn Martens has fragmented.

Sean Delaney's Kenny - Carolyn's computer whizz son - is working as an investigative journalist for the Bitter Pill, an online publication run by Danny Sapani's editor Jamie.

However, he is continuing to delve in his new guise into activities of the Twelve.

Sandra Oh's Eve has, of course, survived her assassination by Villanelle and is working in a Korean restaurant in New Malden in Surrey.

Carolyn is still in MI6 but is kept under the beady eye of Steve Pemberton's rival agent, Paul because the unit operated outside the agency.

Kenny manages to connect with Eve in the civilian world and she agrees to go out for a drink with him, visiting his workplace.

But when she visits the decrepit office block, Kenny dies.

The question that hangs over the rest of third series is: was he pushed off the roof or did he commit suicide?

Drunk and angry, Eve confronts Carolyn about his death after the funeral as well as coming across Villanelle's cunning former handler, Kim Bodnia's Konstantin.

Carolyn initialy shows little emotion over her son's death - a source of great frustration to her daughter, Gemma Whelan's Geraldine who comes to live with her but who also flirts with Konstantin.

Despite initial appearances, Carolyn is grieving and is keen to establish how her son died. 

Konstantin hops between London and Russia, planning to escape to Cuba with his whipsmart daughter Yuli Lagodinsky's Irina who hates her mother and her new partner.

While Dasha encourages Villanelle to resume her killing spree, her protege also toys with rising through the ranks of the Twelve - training future assassins.

Also troubled by Kenny's death, Eve is sucked back into the world of the Twelve - assisting Jamie and Turlough Convery's Tangfastics obsessed tech Wiz at the Bitter Pill, Bear in an investigation into Villanelle and the shadowy organisation that employs her.

Inevitably this brings her back onto the radar of Villanelle.

However it also puts Eve's estranged  Polish émigré husband, Owen McDonnell's Niko Polastri at risk.

With Phoebe Waller-Bridge executive producing, Susanne Heathcote is on showrunning duties, overseeing fellow writers Anna Jordan, Laura Neal, Elinor Cook and Krissie Ducker.

Directors Terry McDonough, Miranda Bowen, Shannon Murphy and Damon Thomas take two episodes apiece and mostly follow the instructions.

The result is a series that is no better and no worse than Season Two.

Villanelle continues to wreak bloody havoc, with a nod and a wink to fans of the show as she metes out her violence.

Eve frets about the Twelve and the writers continue to toy with the suggestion that both may become lovers.

In typical 'Killing Eve' fashion, the action hops between Barcelona, New Malden, Moscow, rural Poland and Aberdeen.

We get a glimpse of Villanelle's family in Russia and an insight into how she might have developed into a psychopath.

However, the series appears to be still in love with itself - revelling in the violence, the location changes, the vibrant costumes worn by Villanelle and the smug captions.

Heathcote very much focuses on parent and child dynamics in this series - from Konstantin's desperation to guide his daughter to Carolyn's uneasy relationship with Geraldine and Villanelle's own uneasy history with her mother, Evgenia Dodina's Tatania.

That also brings in surrogate father-daughter, mother-daughter relationships as well - with Villanelle's rage at Konstantin and affection for Dasha coming under scrutiny and Eve's rage at Carolyn as well.

That means there is a huge dollop of Philip Larkin's adage that your parents (and surrogate parents) fuck you up.

For all its swagger, tge skittish violence and the dazzling visuals, 'Killing Eve' remains, for the most part, frustratingly formulaic.

While that will please some fans, it will frustrate others.

There is one episode that distinguishes itself from the rest in the series and that is 'Are You From Pinner?', which breaks away from the usual routine as Villanelle revisits her family and her past life as Oksana.

This rare glimpse into Villanelle's past through the present manages to shed some light into her motivations.

But it isn't long before she is back to the same old cartoonish, bloody antics. 

While Heathcote and her team of writers hint in the third series that Villanelle's appetite for destruction may be fading, the show serves up the violence anyway.

But - let's face it - that is what diehard 'Killing Eve' fans expect and they still very much get.

Comer and Oh do exactly what is asked of them by Heathcote and her directors.

The same is true of Shaw, Bodnia, Lagodinsky, Delaney and McDonnell and new additions to the cast like Whelan, Pemberton, Sapani, Convery and Walter.

But it still feels rather stale, even if the show isn't quite riddled with mould just yet.

At one point, though, a caption screams "This is bullshit" and you cannot disagree.

'Killing Eve' always was.

The difference is Phoebe Waller-Bridge polished the bullshit so well in the first series that none of the writers since have managed to match the initial sparkle.

A fourth series is on the horizon which will, no doubt, delight some.

But does the rest of us really care?

('Killing Eve' was broadcast on BBC America from April 12-May 31, 2020 and on BBC1 in the UK on April 19-June 7, 2020)