Saturday June 8

Killing Eve

9.15pm, BBC One

When it landed in the UK last autumn, Killing Eve became an instant cult – the kind of out-of-the-blue show that makes you turn to whoever you’re sharing the sofa with and whisper, “This is fantastic,” and then, in the days after, has you asking friends, “Have you seen..?”

If you haven’t seen it (and if not, head for the BBC’s iPlayer, where the entire first series remains available), it’s essentially the story of two women, who both happen to be involved in international assassination – one carrying it out, the other trying to stop her. In the pink, blood-spattered corner is “Villanelle” (Jodie Comer), a happily psychopathic young hitwoman and master of disguise, living a bored life of luxury in Paris on the proceeds of her contract-killing spree for a shadowy organisation. In the drab grey corner, but longing to break free, is Eve (Sandra Oh), a lowly, desk-bound MI5 analyst, who secretly longs for the Bond-style excitement her brains and instincts deserve, and isn’t as content with married life as her husband.

Following the globetrotting cat-and-mouse that ensues when Eve is recruited by MI6 to track Villanelle down by following the corpses in her wake, the show is a kickass spy thriller on top, but something else lurks just beneath the surface. It’s based on a series of books by Luke Jennings, but the TV adaptation, developed by Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, teases out undercurrents, adds sly quirks of its own, and braids it all into a whole new bag.

Sometimes it’s an odd, blunt black comedy. Sometimes, as Eve develops an obsession with/ crush on the unapologetically lethal Villanelle, an unexpected, twisted love story, one that constantly attacks the sexism that has always permeated the spy genre. Killing Eve subverts the “male gaze” by plucking any male gazer’s eyeballs out, turning them back on himself so he can briefly see how stupid he looks, and then forgetting all about him as he drops dead.

Add its visual panache – a stylish, plastic, comic-book gloss – and the way it sounds, grooving to a killer soundtrack that mixes retro French yé-yé moods and twanging 1960s noir-pop, and it’s not quite like anything else. The tension between the various clashing modes keeps you off balance, and completely hooked.

Arriving with a double-bill, this eagerly anticipated second series faces two immediate hurdles. First, the absence of Waller-Bridge, who, having scripted half the first series, is no longer writing episodes, handing over to Emerald Fennell. Thankfully, she does a near-seamless job of slipping into the style previously laid down, aided by the fact that the action resumes a breathless thirty seconds after the climax of the first series.

We find Eve alone in Villanelle’s apartment with a bloody knife, some explaining to do, and a nagging feeling that Villanelle, who has disappeared, will be coming to get her. Later, back in the UK, Eve’s mysterious MI6 boss Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) calls her in when it seems Villanelle might indeed have struck again.

The other problem is more perilous. This time out, Killing Eve no longer has the element of surprise that made the first series such a delight. However, it still has the astonishing, always surprising performance of Jodie Comer. This series sees the return of familiar faces and some welcome new arrivals (it’s great to see Barbara Flynn, Julian Barratt and Nina Sosanya join the cast). But, really, while Sandra Oh is magnificent, this is Comer’s show. Playing the unpredictable Villanelle like a living, bleeding cartoon – fizzing and gleeful one second, slouching, huffy and bored the next – she makes everything else work. A different person every moment, she’s a mad monster. Get ready to fall in love again.

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tonight

Storyville: The Raft

9pm, BBC Four

In 1973, Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés rounded up five men and six women of diverse backgrounds for what at the time seemed one of the most extreme sociological experiments ever dreamed up – although, today, just sounds like another run of the mill reality TV show. With Genovés along to the document, dissect and wind up proceedings, the volunteers were set drifting across the Atlantic aboard a small bare-bones raft for 101 days, completely isolated from the world. Genovés claimed he was out to study links between sexual attraction and aggression, with an aim of promoting world peace. Meanwhile, the media swiftly dubbed his project “The Sex Raft.” For this documentary, director Marcus Lindeen interviews many of the original participants on a reconstruction of the infamous boat, and examines archive footage Genovés shot during their claustrophobic journey.

Monday

The Alan Clark Diaries

10pm, BBC Four

To tie in with five-part documentary Thatcher: A Very British Revolution (Mondays, BBC Two, 9pm), Thatcher mania continues with a repeat of this splendid, cheap as chips adaptation of the raving old Tory's memoirs. Originally broadcast back in 2004, this six-part series was shot very quickly on a shoestring budget, but it was one of BBC Four’s first big hits, largely due to the sly, outrageously fine performance by John Hurt, who powers things along as the boozy politician trying desperately to land a place in Maggie’s Cabinet, but is constantly thwarted by his own attitudes and appetites. Covering the years from 1983 to 1999, Jenny Agutter co-stars as Clark’s long-suffering wife, Jane, Victoria Smurfit plays his mistress “X,” and Julia Davis is on fine form as his unimpressed secretary, Jenny Easterbrook. Two episodes go out back to back tonight.

Tuesday

63 Up

9pm, STV

In 1964, World In Action made a one-off film called Seven Up, gathering 14 seven-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds to record their thoughts on money, school, parents, work, race and love, and hear what they thought their futures might hold. The idea was to explore to what extent British lives were determined by class and social background and, in 1971, as the kids turned 14, Granada had the brilliant idea of filming them again, to see how things were turning out. So it has gone every seven years since, becoming this extraordinary series, one of the most poignant documentaries ever made. Still filmed by original director Michael Apted, this instalment, going out over three consecutive nights, catches up with Tony, Andrew, Sue, Nick, Jackie, Bruce, Peter, Lynn, Paul, John, Symon and Neil to see how they’ve fared since we last saw them in 2012.

Wednesday

Black Mirror

Netflix

Following the ambitious “Bandersnatch” project– the feature length interactive movie released just after Christmas – Charlie Brooker’s anthology of future-tech parables returns for a short, sharp fifth series consisting of three stand alone stories, all written by Brooker, and all available on Netflix from today. “Smithereens” is a post-Uber nightmare about a cab ride gone wrong, with Sherlock’s Andrew Scott as the unravelling driver having a bad day; Miley Cyrus stars in “Rachel, Jack and Ashley, Too,” about a lonely teenager’s fixation on her favourite pop star and her seemingly perfect existence; and “Striking Vipers” follows the reunion between two former friends from college who have since grown estranged, and whose meeting years later sparks off unanticipated consequences. Sweet dreams are not really made of this.

Thursday

Double Cross: The True Story Of The D-Day Spies 9pm, BBC Four Sophie Raworth presents live coverage of today’s commemorations in Normandy this morning in D-Day 75: Remembering The Fallen (9.15am – 1pm, BBC One). Meanwhile, BBC Four is marking the 75th anniversary of the landings by repeating a trio of fine documentaries tonight. In Normandy ’44: The Battle Beyond D-Day (8pm), historian James Holland reconstructs the brutal campaign for control of Normandy that followed the landings. Later, in D-Day To Berlin (10pm) David Dickinson presents evocative archive footage of the Allied campaigns from D-Day through to the fall of Berlin. The pick of the bunch, though is this film from writer Ben Macintyre, who presents another side of the story, examining D-Day not from the point of view of the soldiers who fought it or the tacticians who planned it, but through the perspective of the scattered spies who made it possible, through espionage and deceit.

Friday

Tales Of The City

Netflix

It’s been eighteen years since the last instalment of the TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s much-loved novels about the residents of 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. But fans of the pioneering LGBT saga will be delighted to see that this update reunites the original stars, Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis, and, although there are new faces around, the story lies rooted in past events. In a call back to the original, Mary Ann Singleton (Linney) once again finds herself a stranger to San Francisco, returning two decades after she abruptly left. Her visit coincides with the 90th birthday celebrations of the apartment’s matriarchal landlady Anna Madrigal (Dukakis), leading to a brittle reunion between Mary Ann and the now-grown child she left behind back then, Shawna (Ellen Page). Meanwhile, as Barbary Lane comes under threat from gentrification, Anna looks back on the changes she’s seen.