The BBC’s highly successful series started its life as an e-book series by author Luke Jennings. The trilogy was published from 2017 through to 2020 whilst the series began its four-series run in 2018, the same year as the publication of the second instalment. The Golden Globe and Emmy-winning series stars Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri and Jodie Comer as the murderous Villanelle alongside Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia and Owen McDonnell. Whilst the general gist of the books remains the same, the key characters, the sadistically sapphic vibe and a majority of the criminal misdeeds, the showrunners made many changes for the series, some good and some that are potentially in slightly poor taste. Smaller changes such as Eve’s nationality being switched from British to American make no real impact on the overall show however some make slightly larger ripples. Without wanting to give any spoilers, changes were made to Villanelle’s own backstory and there are some characters which are added or deleted in different series. Fiona Shaw’s slightly dubious MI6 character Carolyn for example had a huge transformation from a slightly mundane male authority figure in the books to the complex character we see on screen. Overall, this can be argued to be a highly successful adaptation which brought a twisted but nonetheless beautiful sapphic love story to the forefront of British television almost under the guise of being a more typical British spy story.
